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cdj
04-21-2011, 08:09 AM
http://thegamingtailgate.com/images/NCAA12/NCAA12Renegade.jpg

The NCAA Football 12 product website has posted a new blog discussing 'The Look and Feel of College Football (http://www.ea.com/ncaa-football/blog/look-and-feel).' The blog recaps the Sizzle video from earlier this week but also goes into some detail on the game's new tackling and collision system.

Capturing the essence of what we see on Saturdays each fall is always going to be a part of the NCAA Football series. In the first "sizzle" video --it's supposed to make you feel tingly all over-- for NCAA Football 12 we wanted to show you additional team specific rituals and other game day details that we've added to the mix this year and most of that can be boiled down to two words: animals and vehicles.

Every year articulate students and distinguished alum from various schools reach out to us and politely inquire as to the progress of including very specific elements into the next year's NCAA Football game. Various four letter words and dizzying levels of disbelief at how a video game could possibly omit such obvious details as the number of rows a visiting school's band occupies at the southeast corner of a stadium are also quite common.

It's amazing how important these details can be in bringing home the authentic college football experience. A person from another planet would wonder why a man dressed as a Native American riding a horse onto a field and throwing a burning spear into a picture of another Native American painted onto the turf is so important to so many people. It just is. For those of us who get it, those moments tell our sports senses to get ready because our teams are about to make us proud. Same thing applies in NCAA Football 12. Yes, we're in direct control of the team's performance and yes we need to see that duck riding on the back of that motorcycle to get in the right mindset.

When you're done scrutinizing the accuracy of your favorite school's mascot, rituals and entrance sequence in that first teaser video or finish complaining about how your school wasn't featured in a two-minute video clip, see how many other details about other programs you can sort out. Let the NCAA Football franchise be an educational tool for the apprentice football fan in you.

For the serious college football video game player we've got new tackles for you. It's easy to say the tackles look good in the teaser video because it's a video that's been edited and tweaked to look awesome. But what we're trying to communicate in that tackling sequence is that we've got an enhanced collision system now where two players have more realistic points of contact between them. Players won't "slide" or "hover" into each other before we see a block or tackle animation start up. Instead, players will make contact and THEN you'll see them react to each other's momentum, mass and skill ratings. Not every tackle will be a bone-rattler or a whiff, but you'll have a different approach as a ball carrier knowing that a defender can't arm tackle you anymore.

There's a lot more to come from NCAA Football 12 --including more about tackling that we've only barely touched on here, so use your imagination-- now that we've got all of the bulldogs, cattle and buffalo out of the way. Years ago, we thought it was a big deal to have Notre Dame's near-human mascot accurately represented next to all of the cartoonish mascots from other schools. Now that we've got livestock and vehicles running around the field there's no turning back.

psusnoop
04-21-2011, 08:21 AM
Nice Blog, looking forward to hearing more soon. I for one really like the new tackle animations. What brief showing we got from them look good, and it was in need of improvement. So that is a huge plus right out of the gates.

Jayrah
04-21-2011, 12:25 PM
Nice nice blog. I am excited about the direction it seems to be taking. I feel like if they could get the duck on the cycle in....they may have got Butch on the four wheeler???? Same concept! Hopefully.