‘NCAA Football ’10’ addictive but flawed
Two news stories are revolving around the release of "NCAA Football '10" -- neither of which has anything to do with the fact that the new game is pretty good but infuriatingly flawed.
The first news item: Sam Keller -- ex-quarterback for Arizona State and Nebraska -- has filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA and Electronic Arts, the maker of "NCAA" games.
Keller claims "NCAA" games have for years used his and other college players' likenesses without paying them a penny.
As you know, players can't earn football-related money while in college. But EA and the NCAA have, and they are fighting the lawsuit.
Keller's name was never used in an "NCAA" game. But his likeness, he says, represented "Quarterback No. 9" at Arizona State and "Quarterback No. 5" at Nebraska.
By coincidence, just before I read about that lawsuit, I ran into former USC quarterback Mark Sanchez (now with the New York Jets) at a charity event in Las Vegas. I asked him if he had ever played an "NCAA" game as himself, as the USC quarterback. Yes, he said, and the player had his jersey number.
"It doesn't have your name on it. It's pretty cool," Sanchez told me. "It's very similar but it doesn't look too much like you."
Sanchez -- whose likeness will appear in EA's "Madden NFL" franchise -- wasn't bitter about not getting money out of the "NCAA" games.
"We survived," he said. "I made it through college. I'm sure everybody else will, too."
Second news item: The on-field reporter for "NCAA Football '10" is Erin Andrews, reprising her on-field reporting role for ESPN.
In June, Andrews was victimized by some joker who shot nude video of her through a hotel door's peephole. Ingenious, yes. Scumbaggery, yes.
That nude video made the rounds online. But then, some other joker inserted computer viruses into variations of the nude video, so if you go searching for "Erin Andrews peephole," you could end up destroying your hard drive.
At any rate, Erin Andrews is not nude in "NCAA Football '10." On the other hand, you can look up cheerleaders' skirts. That's a true story.
So is the game good? Definitely yes, but also no. Flaws:
A) Idiotically, the game has an unforgivable save-progress system. I just lost six hours of progress in a season after I turned off my Xbox 360.
B) It's too easy on offense to purposely bump defensive safeties, causing interference calls against opponents.
C) If I move a backfielder in motion, he sometimes changes his pass route without telling me.
D) The video action gets choppy sometimes during instant replays and running plays.
E) When I run up the score, the announcer tells me I'm a bad sport, and this hurts my team's status. Uh, hello? I have to run up the score to increase my standing in polls, and to practice red-zone plays for future games.
However, I'm going to give "NCAA Football '10" a good rating, because it's addicting. It looks excellent and plays terribly fun -- but does suffer annoying flaws.
So tell your friends, "NCAA Football '10" is a fairly good, big, frustrating game with cheerleader up-skirts, no nude Erin Andrews, and many rosters of college players who are, once again, big boys without names.
("NCAA Football '10" by EA Sports retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3; $40 for PS 2 and PSP -- Plays addictively fun if quite flawed. Looks great. Challenging. Rated "E." Three stars out of four.)
Contact Doug Elfman at 702-383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal. com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
NEW IN STORES
And now for something completely different, "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" is a video game tie-in with a summer movie -- but the game is not based on the movie itself. Rather, the story setting starts after the movie ends. That's an unusual development.
But it might also help the game, for most movie-based games are hemmed in by their tie-in films. That is, if the universe of the film sets the story lines for the game, then the game is severely limited by that game's plot, narrative track and characters.
"The Rise of the Cobra," on the other hand, takes into account G.I. Joe's entire 45-year history to let you play as any of a dozen Joes. And four playable Cobras are unlockable.
The game: G.I. Joe does violent stuff. This is essentially a run-and-gun, shoot-'em-up. Run forward. Kill. Kill some more. It's not realistic shooting. It's old-school shooting, where you and villains (or you and cooperative-mode friends) are constantly firing bullets. At all times.
The Tuesday release retails for $50 for Wii, Xbox 360 and PS 3; $40 for PSP; $30 for DS and PS 2. It's rated "T" for fantasy violence.
I'm a little wary, telling you about the new release "Fritz Chess," because I can't tell if it has been widely released on the market. I know that sounds funny, but I can't track it anywhere but Amazon.com. Other game retailers keep saying it's not for sale yet.
Anyway, this is a chess game for the Wii and DS, coming with 2,000 built-in matches from the history of chess. You can replay those moments as the players, including Kasparov, Fischer, Morphy and even Napoleon and Madame de Remusat.
The release retails for $30 for Wii and $20 for DS. It's rated "E" for mild language and mild suggestive themes.
"Space-Bust-a-Move" is a simple game with various levels of difficulty. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but relies on an old bubble game.
It's sort of like "Break Out," but instead of blocks taking up the top portion of the game screen, what you see are bubbles. At the bottom of the screen, you control a cannon that shoots up bubbles at the upper bubbles.
You must shoot your green bubbles at the green bubbles above, to make them disappear. You must shoot your own yellow bubbles at yellow bubbles above, to make those disappear. And so on, with other colors.
The game retails for $20 for DS. It's rated "E" for comic mischief.
-- By DOUG ELFMAN
