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 So,
who needs EA Sports anyway…
For
that matter who needs Sega and Take-Two?
Not
us, not as long as we have companies like Grey Dog Software
around to look after the needs of PC gamers. Grey Dog is a
Phoenix-based company
that has come out with what could be the panacea to all of our
PC-College Football gaming ills. Their new Bowl
Bound College Football is possibly one of the better
sports games to come along in a long time. And this is coming
from a guy who has played and modded MVP
Baseball 2005 for months now.
 What
Grey Dog has done is created a Football game that gives PC
gamers the total experience of football at the college level.
While the game is text rather than graphics based, it does
make you think about more than just the strategy that you
would employ on the field.
In
Bowl Bound you take on the roll of Head Coach at any University of
your choice. You can take on the task of leading a school as
powerful as a USC, Notre Dame or
Michigan
, or you can start at the bottom with a UConn, UTEP, or create
a team of your choice. Creating a team involves getting into
one of the game files via MSAccess and slipping your new team
into the database. Myself, I found it easy to re-create my own
alma mater, the
Long Beach
St. 49ers and make them an Independent. Then it was just a
matter of creating a league, saving it and then building from
the ground up.
 No
matter what you choose to do you will find yourself deeper
inside the college football experience than what EA Sports’
NCAA Football series has been able to take us before on either
the PC or the consoles. The creators of Bowl
Bound have done something that I have been hoping for in a
PC College Football game for a long time – gave us the
option between having a BCS-style Bowl postseason or a
playoff. In Bowl Bound
you have to
think about budgets and which scouting service to use, what
philosophies to use on offense and defense, who to play on
your schedule, which players to redshirt, and that’s all
before you suit up for your first game!
Fortunately
there is an e-mail system that give you some pointers on what
and how to do  it
before you start playing your season opener. If you don’t
feel like handling all of these duties yourself then you can
always delegate some responsibilities to someone else. The CPU
can take some of those tasks off your hands if you wish, but
don’t be surprised if some of the results aren’t exactly
what you would hope for – like having to open the season at
Troy St.
if you are
Ohio St
.
But
in addition to the e-mails you also have a checklist of what
you should do each week
which makes you keep your hands dirty with the day-to-day
happenings of your program. That’s assuming you haven’t
already delegated some responsibility.
When
it comes to playing the games themselves you again have a
choice, you can either call the plays yourself or you can opt
to have the CPU call the plays using the playbook and
strategies you set up before the game. The game  interface
is pretty straightforward, allowing you to call the formation
and the play or having the CPU suggest a play using the
gameplan. The play-by-play then types out the results a little
at a time or a lot at a time, depending on how fast you want
the action to go. There are even game stats that are updated
with each play for individual players, teams and even the
current drive.
The
postseason has the usual Bowl games, and once a national
champion is crowned the real fun begins.
That’s
when you get to make your program your own, assuming you
don’t get a better job offer from another university.
Assuming you do get a better offer you have the option to take
it or remain where you are to build a dynasty. Then again
there’s the possibility of being fired if you don’t
perform to the expectations of the trustees. Then again if you
do want to build something you have to decide if the coaches
you have under you are going to be able to help you do that or
not. If an assistant is not to your liking then you can let
them go in favor of someone who can coach the system you want.
But
then you have to go out and get the players that can run this
championship system, and that’s where the game gets
interesting.
Getting
recruits and transfers to come to your school is an intensive
and sometimes frustrating process. You can be #1 on a
blue-chip prospects list, but in the end he can wind up going
to LSU or even Boise St even after you’ve shown a lot of
interest in him!  Then
there’s the sleeper that you didn’t even pay attention to
that commits to your program that you didn’t think would go
anywhere who winds up winning the Heisman in his Senior year.
Such is the way of college football.
I
never thought that I would become addicted to a text-based
game, but I find myself playing this game more often than I
play the graphics driven Madden
2005. Even though Madden
has some of the nuances of the economics of the pro game, I
have found myself eschewing Madden
in favor of the possibility of putting Navy in the Rose Bowl,
even at the expense of Lunatix and Instigator games.
Now
the schools in the game itself do not feature the nicknames
and graphics of the actual NCAA Division 1-A teams. Grey Dog
has given us some generic names for the teams, however it is
possible to change the names to their proper monikers. It is
more than possible to mod this game to your liking, there are
databases available through Grey Dogs site that will give you
all the team names and colors right from the start.
There are even mods for all the graphics that you would need
for all of the schools and bowl games. It is also possible to
mod the game so that you can play Division 1-AA, II or III
football, and I understand there are some mods being worked on
for some NAIA schools as well.
Bottom
line: Grey Dog has produced a game that will give us PC gamers
years of enjoyment, and can be modified to reflect the changes
in college football for years to come. The only complaint that
I have about the game is that there is not at present a way to
edit player rosters to reflect actual NCAA rosters. I
understand that will soon be changed as a player editor will
be forthcoming in a soon to be released patch. Once that is
made available, we may have the perfect college football game
on our hands.
On
a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best), Bowl
Bound gets a 9.95. Once we get the player editor in the
game, amend that number to a 10+.
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