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.
This patch is also supposed to address many other major issues that plague almost all of the game's features and modes. Other fixes include:
- glitches in Custom Playbooks that caused plays to disappear from the playbook and be unuseable.
- bugs in AI logic in blocking, option plays, zone coverage, QB spy, and other plays.
- bug that caused blank images to be loaded as highlight photos, preventing highlights from being saved and uploaded to the web properly.
- bug in Online Dynasty that prevented player injuries from being retained after the week advances.
- bug in Dynasty that caused draft class transfers to fail when coaches move to new teams.
- bug that prevented Dynasties from advancing past week 15.
- bug that prevented Road to Glory players from performing audibles even after they had unlocked the ability to do so.
Every game mode included game-breaking glitches that were not caught prior to the game's release. My conclusion: this game was released 2 months earlier than it should have been without first being properly play-tested or balanced. Hooray for consumers having to pay $60 to participate in a paid-for Beta test!
I hope this patch will also address an irritating issue that causes AI defensive backs to instantly know that a running play is being run and be able to make the tackle in the backfield whenever the game is set to All-American or Heisman difficulty levels!
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.
In the meantime, if you need to get your football fix, I guess it's back to playing NFL 2k5 until EA's new games are fixed, as I assume Madden will be full of similar issues (considering how bad the demo was).
Stay tuned.