I grew up in the South where football, especially college, was king. I can
remember the cool autumn days and evenings where my friends and I would gather
around the TV to watch our favorite team play. All week long we would either be
talking about the game coming up or talking about the game that was just played.
Those were indeed good times. So while I actually follow pro football more these
days, I know the passion and excitement of the college game. Now the question is
if 989 Sports newest entry to college pigskin is able to help relive those
wonderful memories of such a great atmosphere. There are certainly some nifty
areas of GameBreaker but when you compare it to what else is available it
quickly turns into a blowout. Let’s see why…
One thing I can certainly not fault GameBreaker on is the amount of game modes
available. There is the Scrimmage mode where you can pit any two teams against
each other and select options like the weather, stadium and time of the game.
Next is the Bowl Season. This is pretty much what college football is now. You
pick a team, there are over a 150 available, and play that team through the
regular season. If you have done well enough in the regular season then you may
get invited to play in one of the Bowl games. A mode that they should adopt in
real life is the Tournament Season. This is similar to the Bowl Season because
you play the regular season schedule. However at the end of the season instead
of going to a bowl game the top 16 teams are broken into four regions. The
winner of each region plays until there are two teams remaining and playing for
all the marbles. Now that’s what I call a National Championship game! Settle it
on the field and don’t leave it up to votes! If going through the regular season
is too much of a strain on you there is the Tournament Mode where you just go
strait to the tournament.
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| An Orangeman gets planted. |
But wait, there are even more modes. Besides the traditional Practice Mode,
there is the Career Mode. You start of as a lowly assistant coach somewhere that
you’ve probably never heard of. But it’s start and that’s all you’re asking for.
If your team does well expect other schools to start offering you better
positions. However if your team tanks, you can start looking for another job
whether you wanted to or not. Part of your job will require you to tackle
recruiting. This is an interesting aspect of the game because it requires you to
keep track of your team’s need. For instance if half of your offensive line is
about to graduate you had better be getting on the horn and trying to get a blue
chip player or three to commit. One down side of the Career mode is that I never
could find the section where you had to explain to the alumni why you were
caught drunk in a strip club or why you were betting on your team to lose by 5.
How realistic is that?
Oh yea, there’s also online play for those with the adapter. I found 989’s
online community very nicely set up. There is even a way to download updated
rosters for you team. Then again if your star running back just broke his leg
maybe you don’t want to take advantage of that. It was easy to find someone
roughly at your skill level in one of the many rooms that are out there. There
is a ranking system so you can see how you’re doing compared to the other online
gamers. Of course there are the chat rooms, mailboxes and other things you would
expect from an online community. 989 has also put in a nifty little feature that
will penalize you if you quit during a game. I witnessed one poor chap that keep
trying to get someone to play against but he was getting shut down by everyone
because his user record showed that he had quit a lot of games. You may also set
up your own Tournament or join one already created. This community is also going
to be the home of other 989 games like NFL GameDay 2004 and NBA ShootOut. There
is even a sport score ticker that runs at the bottom on your screen with actual
results of real games in progress. Cool. It’s really quite a shame that the game
doesn’t live up to its online support.
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