Overview:
EA Sports is putting the call out to all university alumni and college football fans. Pick your former or favorite school and see if you can take them down the road to the National Championship. Instead of spending your Saturday yelling at the TV about the bum that plays quarterback for your school, you can actually play as that bum and see if you can do any better.

All the major universities are here (and even some that are not so major) for a total of 112. NCAA Football 98 has the college stadiums, college play books, college fight songs, and the college atmosphere Plus, you can even create your own football dynasty. Cool.

Gameplay:
NCAA 98 plays a lot like Madden 98 with one major advantage: the play book. For some reason, the college plays are quite different from the pros. You can run the "wishbone" offense or go for the "triple option." You will never see this type of scheme in a pro game, but that is why college football is so exciting—you never know what to expect. And fortunately, this game gives you ability to call the unpredictable plays.

As gameplay goes, NCAA 98 does a good job keeping up with the big boys. The game has the hurry-up feel of college football and flowed along nicely. It seems that the same basic game engine that is used in Madden 98 is used in this game, which is alright—it's a good engine. This means that if you have played the pro game, the transition to college should be a piece of cake.

You can also choose to play about any school you can imagine. Anybody playing this game should be able to identify the powerhouse teams by name, but learning about the smaller college teams is more of a problem. To help you choose from teams that may not make the headlines, the developers have supplied a grading system of each team's offense and defense from A to D.

A big area of concern in past EA Sports football titles has been the AI or lack thereof on some plays. This game does a pretty good job of balancing the defense. Some plays you can break for big gainers, while other plays get stuffed before they even get started. I did find some passing plays that seemed to work too often, which resulted in some inflated passing statistics at the end of the game. But I'm sure that it didn't help that I was playing as Florida against Boise State. Hey, give me a break. They had a fair chance.

The options are all pretty much standard fare. You can play with varying quarter lengths, weather conditions, crowd noise, etc. I must say that I was disappointed in the rain and snow modes. The graphics were cheesy-looking and actually bordered on distracting.

I did like the tournament mode. This allowed you to pick 4, 8, or 16 teams to battle it out to the end. You can either have the computer simulate the other games or have 16 of your closest buddies over to play the tournament out. This is definitely the way to go because your friends either pick the school they attended or one of their favorites. For some reason, people really get psyched up over college football teams and take them seriously. Your loyalty to a team will only grow the more times you beat your friend in the tournament. If you do challenge your friends to a tournament, I hope you went to a school with a top ranked football team—or else you may find your foot in your mouth.

One thing from the "doesn't-affect-gameplay-but-is-still-cool" department: after you score a touchdown, the school's fight song is played by the band. Like I said, people seem to have a tremendous loyalty to their former school and nothing gets them going like their old fight song. After a few beers, some of my friends even tried singing to the songs after they scored. This was all the more reason to play good defense.

One last thing that I really liked was the ability to replay some of the biggest bowl games of the past. Unfortunately, NCAA 98 does not use the players' names, I assume due to licensing issues. It does have the jersey numbers of the players and the unnamed players bear a strong resemblance to their real-life counterparts. If you know the players on your favorite team, you should have no problem recognizing the star player.

Graphics:
The graphics were a little disappointing. For one thing, they were too grainy. They could have used some serious touch-ups. Also, the lame attempt at creating rain and snow did more harm than good. As far as the stadiums and such, they were very accurately depicted. Little things down to trees in the end zone were here. The schools' colors were all accurate enough to add realism to the game.

Bottom Line:
If you are a fan of college football, you should be fairly happy with this game. With tons of schools to choose from and so many different plays available, I never lost interest in the game. The schools, colors, players, fight songs, and some good football were all here. And the best part of the game? I didn't have to watch Notre Dame play every week if I didn't want to.