NCAA GameBreaker 2003
Score: 68% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: 989 Sports Developer: 989 Sports Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 2 (1 - 8 with Multitap) Genre: Sports
Graphics & Sound: My biggest concern when I started playing NCAA GameBreaker 2003 was how it would compare to NCAA Football 2003 by EA Sports. Unfortunately, the game pales in comparison. GameBreaker 2003's graphics are decent, but they are not able to compete with other titles out right now. The players appear squarish and don't have a very natural look to them. The animation for the game is very jumpy and appears to be at a really low frame rate. Receivers never turn around to look for the football; it just seems to find their hands magically. The same goes for when a player picks up a fumble. I had a play where my running back picked up a fumbled football just by running over the ball. He never had to even slow down or lean over to pick it up, it just hopped into his hand. One positive thing I can say about GameBreaker 2003's appearance is that they seemed to get some stadiums more correct than other games have done. LSU's Tigers Stadium is almost perfect. The only thing that was missing was the 'Welcome to Death Valley' sign on the press box. They even seemed to have the Louisiana Lottery logo on the scoreboard! The sound for GameBreaker 2003 is nothing spectacular. They don't have real fight songs, which is something I think is needed to capture the football atmosphere. The announcers are alright, but they don't let you feel you are watching a real football game. It seems every time my kick returner touches the ball in the end zone, Keith Jackson will say 'He could go all the way.'
Gameplay: NCAA GameBreaker 2003 offers several ways to play. The Scrimmage mode allows for you to start right away with an exhibition game or play against a friend. Bowl Season mode lets you play a single season, ending with the traditional college bowl games. Unique to GameBreaker is a mode called Tournament Season. If you are not a believer in the BCS and want to see a playoff format in college, this is the mode for you. You play it out just like a normal season, but at the end you are seeded into a 16-team playoff bracket for the National title. Tournament Mode is there for those who want to play a tournament, but not an entire season. It can be set to 8 or 16 teams. Finally, there is Coaching Career mode. It is unique in that it will not allow you to start as the head coach of any team in the nation. Instead you have to take a Defensive or Offensive Coaching job at a small school or start as a Special Teams coach at any school. You then work your way up to being a head coach at a big program. I think this system is a more realistic system than any other system I've seen in a game. GameBreaker 2003's recruiting is not as detailed as I've come to expect in college football games, but is decent.
Difficulty: NCAA GameBreaker 2003 has 4 difficulty settings: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and (guess what) Senior. The game never was really challenging at Sophomore level, other than me getting used to the controls. After that, I was beating teams by a pretty large margin. The jump up to Senior level was barely noticeable. I just came off a squeaker with Florida on Sophomore level, and then bumped it up to Senior level. I then proceeded to blow South Carolina out of the water. It seems if there was some big jump in A.I., South Carolina would have been more of a challenge than it was for LSU.
Game Mechanics: NCAA GameBreaker 2003 plays very awkwardly. 989 seems to like making you press multiple buttons for simple tasks. For instance: To juke, you have to press both the L2 and R2 buttons simultaneously. Also, the pitch buttons aren't very effective. I've only managed to successfully complete one pitch to my running back out of about 7 tries. The quarterback will throw the ball to an exact spot on every pitch, and if your running back isn't standing in line with that spot, it will be a fumble. The frame rate on GameBreaker makes it very difficult to play. Playing defense for instance, you have almost no time to adjust on a throw because by the time you see where it's going, the ball it just about there. The loading time in GameBreaker 2003 is not outrageous, but was very boring to sit through. It was also annoying because they don't give you any update on how much of the game is loaded, so you would have no way of knowing if the game has frozen or if it is just taking a while to load. The memory card space is a bit of good news about this game; the most any single save will take is around 400 KB of space. This is probably due to the fact that GameBreaker 2003 doesn't allow you to put real names into the game. NCAA GameBreaker 2003 was a very awkward game to play. The graphics weren't very fluid and were not at all believable (or at least for a PS2 game). It's not a game I would recommend to anyone who is not a 989 Sports lover. Hopefully 989 will spend the next year catching up with the rest of the market.
-Dark Hornet, GameVortex Communications AKA Clovis Mello
Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter NHL Hitz 20-03