July 13, 2004 - NCAA Football 2005 is a bit of a conundrum. The series has always been great -- in fact, it's been my favorite football game the past three years -- but it's never managed to be superior in graphics., sound, or gameplay compared to Sega's 2K series or EA's own Madden. It's never better on technical merits, but always seems more fun. That tradition looks to continue this year as NCAA Football 2005, despite some nice feature additions, remains Madden's little brother. Though it will provide endless hours of fun, the series is beginning to show its age.

Atmosphere
No college game is worth a lick if it doesn't create the proper collegiate atmosphere and this year NCAA Football 2005 does that better than any college game to date. Thanks to multi-tiered sounds, every stadium properly quiets and erupts depending on the situation. And there's a big difference between playing at Tennessee and UAB. No longer will you suffer through generic crowd volumes that seem to follow every team no matter where they play. That's because EA has made a novel innovation with Home Field Advantage.

The Home Field Advantage system ranks the toughest places to play in college football and adjusts the sound accordingly. That doesn't mean that TCU can't take the punch out of the UCLA faithful with a few halted drives and a touchdown here and there, but it's not going to be easy. And should UCLA get a TD or have any sort of momentum swing? The stadium will erupt and in fact shake. That's right, your controller will vibrate and the screen will actually shake with the power of the crowd.

This has major gameplay implications. If the crowd is chanting, the stadium rocking, calling audibles will be very tough, especially near the end zones. Your receivers may toss up their hands in frustration and if you don't notice and run the audible anyway, they may run the wrong route, resulting in an incompletion or interception. This gives a whopping advantage to home teams, especially in big stadiums.

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For Dynasty Mode, Home Field Advantage is dynamic, meaning that through the course of your dynasty -- across the limitless years you coach -- the success and failure of teams will alter the power behind a stadium. Granted, it will take a long decline in team play to really take the punch out of a place (please stop looking in the direction of Penn State) and I've yet to see a place like Florida State loose its oomf just because of one or two downed seasons, but there is some position shifting, which is noted in a 25 Toughest Places to Play listing in Dynasty Mode.

I just love Home Field Advantage. Just plain love the idea and the implementation. When you're the home team, before every snap on defense you can tap the Crowd Pump button to incite the crowd to get louder. This isn't so easy, simply because you may want to audible and shift the line at the same time, so you'll have to sacrifice some defensive adjustments in order to pump the crowd.

Composure
All of this shaking and whooping it up does serve an ultimate purpose. That's because the other great addition this year is the idea of player composure, which ties in with Home Field Advantage. Confident players tend to play better. Why do you think Neon Deon was always smiling? For NCAA 2005, players can be composed, neutral, or shaken. This affects their overall ratings and fluctuates throughout the game. Throw a few incomplete passes in a row and top that off with an interception and your QB may begin to doubt himself. The crowd then begins to go nuts, rattling the young QB. Now he's got an even tougher time reading the defense and hitting his spots. The same goes for every player on the field, on offense or defense. Even the O-Line has composure, so that a freshman tackle can get beaten twice in a row for sacks and suddenly he's got no nerve.

You can see all of this unfold by using the Matchup Stick to see the matchups between receivers and DBs, linebackers and running backs, and D-Line and O-Line. The matchup shows the composure and overall rating for each player allowing you to spot the weak holes in a defense and attempt to exploit them. Of course, your opponent can see the same thing and use defensive audibles to adjust mismatches. It's a bit of a chess game and it works very well. I hit the Matchup Stick just about every time I step to the line.