NCAA Football 09

Reviewed by:
Gerasimos Manolatos

The Skinny: Jockstrap yourself in and guide your favorite college team to four years of keggers and superstardom.

The Good: Fans who've clamored for an online Dynasty mode finally get their wish. Now you and up to 12 friends can go head-to-head recruiting, scheduling, and competing with any of the 120 schools included in the game. You can also start from scratch with Campus Legend mode, in which you create a high school player, get him recruited to a topflight football school, win the Heisman Trophy, and then transfer the file over to the upcoming Madden 09.

The Bad: The stadiums look great, but the field looks like construction paper striped in white crayon. The commentary often makes no sense—there's no need to say, "Let's see how that turnover affects the rest of the game," when you're up 49–10 with a minute left in the fourth quarter. The game sliders do not work correctly; if the CPU is too hard and you try to knock its abilities down a notch, your team's A.I. also takes a hit, essentially canceling out any changes.

Attention: 360 Achievement Whores! You can easily earn all of the game's 1,000 gamer score points by simming through a couple of seasons in Dynasty, setting the CPU to the easiest setting, and creating your own team of high-powered 99-rated players.

Buy, Rent, or Disembowel? A qualified rent: If you already have NCAA Football 08 and/or aren't that hot about the new online Dynasty mode, it's hard to justify plunking down another 60 bucks for basically the same game as last year's.

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