I was hoping to have a review for this game earlier. But unfortunately, the game shipped with some very serious bugs. EA announced that a patch was in the works way back on August 2^nd, but that patch took over a month to deliver. Either EA really dropped the ball with this patch, or the problems were even more serious than we’d thought.

Table of Contents

• Gameplay overview
  • Defensive control
  • Offensive control
  • Blocking
  • Returning legacy issues
  • Clock Management / Play-selection
  • Cheating AI
• Game Modes
  • Dynasty: Coaching Carousel
  • Dynasty: Custom Conferences
  • Custom Playbooks
  • Road to Glory: High School
  • Road to Glory: College Career
• ESPN Presentation
• Glitches galore!
• Conclusion

According to a post that I saw on Operation Sports, EA has finally submitted its second patch for NCAA Football 12 to Sony and Microsoft for approval for release. It's about damn time. This patch was announced back on August 2nd on the EA blog, and football fans have been waiting [not so] patiently for a whole month to hear news from EA regarding the patch's release.

This patch is supposed to fix a bug that changes player tendencies when their names are changed, which makes it impossible to play the game using named rosters, since AI-controlled players will behave completely inappropriately. Most hardcore football fans have had to wait for the patch to release in order to be able to even start their Road to Glory and Dynasty modes.

...

Personally, I've been delaying my review of this game while I wait for this patch to hit, since the problems are so severe. Regardless of whether or not the patch significantly improves the quality and playability of the game, I will be taking the poor state of the game at release into account when I write my final review.

Excited by the end of the NFL lockout, I just couldn't wait to get back to video game football. I purchased NCAA Football 12 last week, but haven't had much time to play it yet. But before I begin a Dynasty, I wanted to make sure that the rosters for my alma mater UNLV was as correct as I could make it.

I started with the rosters provided by Operation Sports user GamingTailgate. The guys at Operation Sports and Pasta Padre do a fantastic job with their rosters every year, and my hat's off to those guys for the tremendous work they do making sure that NCAA Football fans have accurate rosters for the new games as soon as possible. However, I noticed that they had made some glaring (but understandable) errors with the rosters for the UNLV Running Rebels.

UNLV isn't exactly a top-tier team. In fact, UNLV is a bottom-tier team. They only had two wins last year. So I'm sure that neither EA Sports nor Operation Sports cares too much about making sure the rosters are as up-to-date as possible for such a team. But I care, so I opened up the UNLV spring 2011 prospectus for reference.

The NFL may be in lockout still, but the NCAA is definitely going to be playing football this fall. Now that it's July, we're almost at the point where EA is ready to start releasing it's annual football titles. But first come the playable demos. I finally got some time to mess around with the NCAA Football 12 demo that was released earlier this week.

A few notes that I want to start with:

1. I was not able to record or take screenshots of my actual gameplay. So sadly, you'll have to take my word for it when I say something about how the game looks or plays, since I can't provide photographic or video proof.
2. The demo does not allow the user to access the instant replays. So I can't go into real detail examining any individual plays. I can only see what I see in real-time while playing the game. So I could be missing a lot of positive and/or negative aspects of the game that I'm just not noticing.
3. I played all my demo games on the All-American difficulty. I did not have access to sliders or any other control configurations, so everything is set to default.

Late last year, Viacom decided to sell the game developer Harmonix. Rumors suggested that Electronic Arts or even Activision might buy them out. Fortunately for the consumers, neither of those rumored deals was made! We all saw how Activision handled its ownership of Guitar Hero, effectively running the franchise (and possibly the music-rhythm genre, itself) into the ground by release one or two games every year! And we all also know how Electronic Arts's EA Sports brand has handled Madden NFL over the past 6 years with all competition in the pro football gaming market being effectively stamped out.

No, fortunately for us gamers, Harmonix decided to set up a holding company in order to buy themselves and once again become an independent developer.

As stated in an interview between Joystiq and Harmonix founder and current Vice President Chris Rigopolous, Harmonix has also severed ties with Viacom-owned MTV.

• Good news? Or bad news?
  • The good news
  • The bad news
• So what's the future for Harmonix?
• My personal wishlist