Game broken. Review

Game broken.

If the game industry were a football team, 989 Studios would be the kid keeping

the bench warm. I always sorta root for them, because hell, I used to be that

kid; I know the pain that is an atomic wedgie.

But

sympathy and mushy feelings aside, 989 Studios’ new NCAA Gamebreaker 2003

is out of its league and provides a meager challenge for EA’s NCAA

Football 2003. Guess the fat kid on the bench didn’t go to weight-loss camp.

The game offers what you’d expect in terms of modes, such as Scrimmage games

and Tournaments and Seasons. However, Gamebreaker offers a one-of-a-kind

Coaching Career mode in which you start as a jobless football junkie looking

for any position on any team. Do your job well and you’ll get promoted to better

positions and receive job offers from more prestigious schools.

Coaching Career mode is great because it exposes the player to several different schools and thus several different playbooks and teams. Having been a special teams coach for Cal, I now have a heightened understanding of why the Bears suck so bad.

However, for those of you that are only interested in playing with a specific team – say, Miami – the Coaching Career option will disappoint, as there’s no way you’re going to be working for that team without investing serious time in a bunch of other, crappier schools.

Unfortunately, Gamebreaker isn’t nearly as imaginative with its gameplay.

The control scheme is identical to EA’s scheme, except that the ‘X’ button equals

‘sprint’ on both sides of the ball, so no more mashing the wrong button. Also,

pressing the L2 button while juking, sprinting, or hurdling results in a better

sprint, jump, or hurdle.

Offense in Gamebreaker is sort of a treat, since you have to totally

screw up all four downs to not cross the first-down marker. Running is easy

thanks to worthless defensive linemen, and passing simply never fails. Defenders

will clog a passing lane every once in a while, but you can get away with things

in Gamebreaker (throwing into quadruple coverage) that you pay for in

other games.

While

playing offense is very easy, playing defense will have you mashing your cleats

into the turf out of frustration. Pass rushers get stuck on offensive linemen

who aren’t even actively blocking them, and the secondary just doesn’t make

plays. The only thing I found really cracked open an offense was putting a lot

of outside pressure on the QB, who moves ridiculously slowly.

I’m oddly bothered by the Play Selection menu. It essentially borrows from

Sega’s 2K football games, but lacks the intuition

and attractive visual presentation. Everything is set against a black background,

which should make the text stand out, but the menu has such crummy resolution

and drab colors that everything looks murky.

Visually, Gamebreaker suffers from a plethora of ailments. The view

is up-close and in your face, but that means you never get a real good look

at what’s coming downfield at you. The resolution is grainy and jagged, while

the animation looks like something out of a PSOne game. Furthermore, the collisions

aren’t well synchronized, with men flying in random directions several moments

after they should.

Aurally, Gamebreaker is unimpressive with tinny fight songs and dull

commentary from Dan Fouts and Dick Enberg. As with virtually every other aspect

of Gamebreaker, the sound just seems completely under-produced.

NCAA Gamebreaker 2003 is a mediocre game at best, and compared to the

competition, seems somewhat pointless. If you’re looking for an easy football

game and know you don’t like the Sega titles or the EA titles or even NFL

Blitz, then I guess Gamebreaker might be for you. Otherwise, drop

some money on a real college football game and get NCAA Football 2003.

This one is strictly Division II.