NCAA Football 08 [X360]

''Even though the chance to relive your personal "Friday Night Lights" scenario is a lot of fun, one of the largest problems that constantly appears to plague the mode is that it's way too easy to become successful. Your high school career is practically set up to showcase your player as a big fish in a small pond, particularly on offense, so if you happen to have any kind of skill with the game, you'll easily be able to earn a four or five star caliber rating. However, even if you're having a hard time, a three caliber rated player can quickly ascend through the depth chart at their school to become a starter. The first quarterback I created needed only three weeks to move up from third string position at a top 10 rated school to owning the position, which he was never ever in danger of losing to incoming freshmen or the other QBs on the team. After I acquired that spot, I didn't even need to attend practice to maintain that spot. How does that work?

The other thing that was way too easy was the inclusion of stat boosts by performing just about any activity. If you go to practice, you gain temporary stat boosts. Give a friend a lift or attend a pep rally, and you'll get a stat boost. Even if you fulfill some aspect of a school project, you gain a boost to your GPA. Without having to actually work for all of these, it makes gaining actual permanent boosts feel somewhat anti-climactic. What's more, there are some times when you'll technically get a bad result from an activity and it won't have any impact upon your player. For instance, I played a pickup football game and was told that my running back sprained his ankle. However, the next day, he's perfectly fine and running for 120 yards in the next game. I'd love to meet that team trainer…

While NCAA 08 is somewhat sharper than last year's title, especially thanks to the new animations, there are still some problems that weren't fixed from last year's title. Apart from the camera issues that were mentioned earlier about replays, there are plenty of moments where you'll notice that the clipping through players runs rampant. I'm not just talking about players that wind up running through other people as they try to get into position; sometimes it affects how a game is played. Earlier this week, I was playing a match with Greg, and the tight end caught the ball through his back for a seven yard gain without physically turning around. That was stunning, and definitely different from the ball warping situations that we found, where a player suddenly was drawn faster than they could physically run to a pass to make a reception.

Other issues that were found within last year's game are slightly better, but not by much. For instance, weather actually looks a bit better than it did last year, which is probably due to the association with The Weather Channel, although it still appears to be situated solely over the football field instead of the entire stadium. As the camera moves, you'll notice that the weather effects seem to be rather isolated with rainfall and snow. On the other hand, heavy snow will literally obscure the sidelines and yard markers, making it extremely hard to play in college games that resemble the Ice Bowl. The only downside is that your movement on these affected fields won't move snow or other environmental effects. Your players will also seem unaffected by the elements, and I can't actually recall seeing rain bead off a helmet or soak a jersey.

The online play is still solid, although it's still disappointing that there are still no online season options included for players to join and play. You're still relegated to ranked or unranked matches, but that's pretty much all that you have outside of the lobby system. The ESPN license, which was weakly used in last year's game, is still pretty light. While a mock ESPN.com feature is used for dynasty mode news, and there is the ESPN On Demand and ESPN Radio updates that joins the ticker, there's still very little content that gets provided to the game. I've seen some of the same news updates and video clips on the game menu for almost a week, which has even avoided many of the important stories that have happened in the sporting world. The entire ESPN thing really needs to be improved functionality wise or eliminated.

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