- As the seasons wear on, EA's two popular football franchises, NCAA Football and Madden NFL, are starting to look less like fraternal twins and more like distant cousins. NCAA Football 2005, for the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube, is taking another huge step towards differentiating the game of college football from pro football thanks to the inclusion of the new Home Field Advantage feature. If there's any doubt that EA isn't serious about separating the two football simulations, look no further than the fact that Playmaker control on the right analog stick --a huge addition to Madden 2004-- will not be included in NCAA Football 2005. Improvising on the fly isn't as big a part of the college game as the jitters, momentum and crowd noise of playing in a hostile environment so that's exactly where NCAA 2005 is going to hang its helmet.
The home field advantage will lend ratings and composure boosts to the home team depending on the size of the crowd and intensity of the rivalry. The developers at EA Tiburon have ranked the top 25 toughest places to play in college football with Tennessee at the top at the time of this writing. This means when the Vols host Georgia, the house will be packed and especially vocal throughout the game. The size and subsequent intensity of the crowd is limited by the size of the stadium so that 100,000+ screaming Wolverine fans in Ann Arbor will be louder and more disruptive to the visiting Buckeye players than a full house (90,000) at the Rose Bowl even if it's USC versus UCLA. The volume of crown noise matters because you'll hear the extra roar coming out of your speakers and the visiting players on offense won't be able to hear audible and hot route calls when they're on offense. The "hype the crowd" control will now come with an on-screen meter for the home team so you'll see and hear the crowd getting more and more intense as you repeatedly mash the button. When the crowd-o-meter maxes out, the screen will begin to shake and, if you're playing against a buddy, his or her controller will start to vibrate.
If that's not distracting enough for the visiting team while they're offense, the fact that audibles and hot routes simply won't be heard by receivers and backs could be devastating. This comes with a unique set of animations of wideouts walking around the line of scrimmage, leaning in and straining to hear the quarterback as he's barking signals. They'll shrug their shoulders and throw their hands up in frustration as an indication that your audible wasn't heard. This means that receiver will more or less be running a useless route on that particular play. The thought is, you were calling an audible for a reason; you saw something you didn't like from the defense. Now your receiver has no choice but to run the route that you called in the huddle, since he doesn't know what you want him to do now. Former University of Pittsburgh star Larry Fitzgerald told us that normally he would use hand signals to communicate audibles while playing in hostile environments but crowd noise would force them to keep it pretty simple. However, he's a first round pick for good reason.
NCAA Football 2005
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Originally Posted by No Fear 23
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