NCAA Football 12

[JonLP24]

Seems like a great game, I'm enjoying it. Some of the new features are when you do to the one-player mode, Road to Glory, are you can play a full high school schedule rather than just playoffs in previous versions. You can also edit team names and colors on the schedule and have 3 stadiums to choose from for your team.

I spend most of my time in this game and past versions on Dynasty mode. Some of the features is you can edit conferences and bowl bids. It seems the Independent conference must have at least 1 team (you can't completely get rid of conferences on this game) and a minimum of 4 teams in other conferences. It seems since the Pac-12 and from the way the game plays out (I never touched the Big 12) because both the Pac-12 and Big-12 play 9 conference games it affects any changes you might make. For example in my third season in, UCF went 14-0 and finished the season #2, I rewarded them by adding them to the Big East making 10 teams and therefore creating 9 conference games for everybody. I wanted to replace UCF in Conference USA so I added Troy from the Sun Belt which created 9 conference games for everybody in Conference USA. Just be aware if you do anything real crazy with the conferences in-case you may be someone who is used to let's say the SEC playing 8 conference games.

Also what is new about Dynasty is you can either coach as a offensive or defensive coordinator. When you coach a game you can only control what you coach so if you're an offensive coordinator you only call offensive plays, no special teams plays either. On plays you don't control you can either "watch play", "sim play", "sim to end of quarter", and "sim to on the field". I say I do like the challenge of working myself up the coaching ladder with this. I choose defense so I could learn that initially to help me when I'm a head coach, let me say it is not fun. Offenses get a lot of 3-and-outs and often times especially against great teams they turn the ball over in their own territory forcing you to defend a short field. I wouldn't recommend "watching plays" near the end because the coach seems to draw up passing plays when 2 runs to get to third down would use 120 seconds of game clock helping me as the defense.

With the coaching there is "coaching carousel". I think this feature is a lot of fun. Jobs open up and get filled as you press "next coach". For example, I'm trying to land any job at Arizona State. I saw the D. Coordinator take the Head Coach job at Eastern Michigan because the HC at Eastern Michigan was fired opening up a D. Coordinator job. It was filled by someone other than me (I was a third place candidate, there isn't anything to do to increase interest with schools except by choosing that school as your alumni and improving your coaching rating which you can improve by achieving goals you can view under the coaching section of your dynasty), it was a D. Coordinator at UCLA that took the Arizona State D. Coordinator job. Which left an opening for the UCLA D. Coordinator which needed to be filled(which I forgot who). I hope you can get the picture because it is really neat IMO. You can also keep up with job security rankings to see who is in-danger of losing their job.

I think probably the greatest thing is the Online Dynasty. It is just like regular Dynasty but with other players. You recruit and play your game of the week and when you're done you hit "Ready to Advance". Whenever the Commissioner feels they have enough players and given enough time to recruit and play the game, he/she advances the week. The hard part is finding active players for the leagues.

I was hoping if anyone plays this for ps3 to hopefully come join my league. I wanted a league with certain things I wanted to play with so I created one. The things are I moved TCU from the Mountain West to the Big East which is what they are doing for the 2012 season. I then moved Nevada, Hawaii, Fresno State to the Mountain West. I also gave Mountain West a "Any BCS Bowl Bid". Don't be alarmed by that, say an SEC vs Big 12 is in the National Championships that creates an At-Large bid in the Sugar Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. Unless it is Notre Dame and some non-BCS team in the title game, extra schools in the top 10 will get a BCS Bowl bid. I was thinking about rewarding non-BCS teams that finish a season undefeated by placing them in a BCS conference but I will wait til things are moving in my league.

I have a downloaded roster set that is a close to accurate as you can find. Even when it comes to the Ohio State Roster, Terrelle Pryor is eliminated completely, Ohio State is not as good as they are when you get the game out of the box. Most of the players have real-life names. Jacory Harris for Miami, Denard Robinson for Michigan, Landry Jones for Oklahoma. Andrew Luck for Stanford.

Also I play on the Heisman level. I don't believe EA goes crazy with their hardest levels in their football games. I feel even on that level if you have a more talented team, you'll win more often than not against the CPU. Also on 7-minute quarters.

If you're interested in joining let me know and I'll PM you how to get there. I'm Arizona State and someone else is Virginia Tech so there are still a lot of teams to choose from. I'm only week 2 so I only went past the small group of games in week 1. Recruiting is on All-American which gives you 2 times to change the subject in a phone call to a recruit. (On my regular Dynasty I do Heisman recruiting which gives you 1 chance to change the subject per phone call)

I'm open to suggestions on how to run the league and what kind of rules. Some people that run leagues hate people that go on 4th down or run up the school, personally I don't care. I will go for it about 88% of the time on 4th & 1 unless I really don't need the points, sometimes you can't help by run up the score by running simply off tackle. I'll try to advance every week so that means play your game of the week and recruit and you're ready to advance. The problem is waiting on others. I know life gets in the way so if you join and need more then a week, let me know here I guess.

Thanks. It is somewhat of a review and also wondering if those who play the game for PS3 would be willing to join my league. :)

[charlie and algernon]

1. Do they actually have REAL high schools?

I'm not foolish to think they'd have all 10,000+ high schools in the Country, but do they at least have the big schools?

I don't really have the money to buy a new game, but I'd consider it if you could actually start on REAL high schools. Or can you create your own conferences?

[JonLP24]

2. From what I can tell

There was no other high school names than the city. For example, for Arizona there is usually Tucson, Sun City, Florence, Phoenix, etc. No names like Westwood (my high school). But you can edit your opponents jerseys, names. I'm not sure how it works as far as divisions or conferences go. I think you play 10-12 opponents(you set how many) and do the playoffs. Never made it past a few games, trying to go for scrambler QB is difficult. They can't pass real well and "balanced" QBs are too slow for me. Oh you can also do two-way player, like play defense and by recruited based on your abilities on offense and recruited separately for your abilities on defense.

on edit- you can also edit the skill level of your HS opponents, I know Hamilton is simply the best in my state this past decade--you might know Terrell Suggs one of their alumni, so I created a black and purple team with the skill levels to the max. I haven't played them yet.