Everyone expected NCAA 2004 to improve over NCAA 2003, which is excellent since 2003 was such a solid title. The main issue is how much. Will NCAA 2004 be considered as primarily a roster update and a bug patch? Or will changes in AI and game updates make this a groundbreaking title?
GRAPHICS: 94
Graphically, the game isn't terribly different from NCAA 2003. The stadia are generally the same as in 2003, although various improvements over the last year (such as the new luxury boxes at Florida Field) have been added. But there really isn't much need to improve on the stadia, as they have been excellent since NCAA 2002.
The crowd is somewhat two-dimensional and does not do a lot other than flail when their team is doing well. But who needs highly detailed 3-D fans anyways? The important aspects of the crowd are well represented. The bands and away fans are sitting in the right seats for each stadium and are perfect. An addition I liked was the red and yellow rain ponches that the fans wear during rainy games. These little additions are the kind of great advances that show that Tiburon has put a lot of effort into making the title as realistic as possible.
On the sidelines, there is the chain gang, cheerleaders, and coaches. They're all great, although there are a few things that can be picked on (such as the modern coaches with headsets on the sidelines with the classic 1930 Notre Dame squad wearing the old-style uniforms from way back when).
Some teams have "team specific" intros, but it seems like they're just entering the field from the correct stadium entrances. No big T at Neyland Stadium, no Appaloosa at Doak Campbell. But they do have smoke at Miami games...so that's a plus.
The animations for NCAA 2004 use 2003 as a base and add quite a few new animations. In general, they are very smooth and realistic. Some of them are worthy of admiration in instant replay mode. The new animations are generally good, although some (such as the tackle from behind where the defender grabs the runner's collar and yanks him back) are a bit overdone. Also, the "stumble forward three yards" animation tends to happen too often.
There are two other animation problems that are rare but of note. The first is the "shotgun" collision, where a player gets nicked in the knee/leg and goes down as if he was shot by someone in the crowd. The tackling animations don't seem to be based on a skeletal system where you hit a player's leg and he stumbles or trips. It is more collision based, where two places hit and it comes up with the corresponding animation. This works most of the time, but on occasion you get unrealistic animations (like the shotgun collision).
The second is the "warp slide". In this one, players running a pass route will automatically slide forwards five yards to meet the ball and catch it. Both of these are rare (I've seen them maybe once every 6-8 games) but still tend to jolt you because of their unrealistic nature. But outside of these occasional mishaps, the animations are simply excellent.
NCAA 2004 also debuts a new camera view. It's fairly close to the line for run plays and zooms out for passes. This is similar to the classic view, but varies in two major ways. First, the camera zooms in on play-action and zooms out on draw. This works well in fooling a human opponent into thinking run when you'll actually pass (and vice versa). The second addition is the Rollout Cam. The camera follows the QB on rollouts and rotates to see different angles of the field (other than the usual straight towards the goalposts view). This helps immensely in seeing various angles and paths for passes that you couldn't see otherwise. The new camera view is one of the best innovations in NCAA 2004.
AUDIO: 94
NCAA 2004 still holds the title for best commentary in a sports game. The three man booth of Nessler, Corso & Herbstreit is nearly perfect. They've added lots of between play banter, and Nessler has quite a few more mid-play lines to highlight special moves or developing big plays. The dialogue is deep enough so that lines never get too repetitive.
The crowd is solid. They've added extra situation-specific chants to the game, such as the "Orange & Blue" chant before kickoff at Florida games, or the "Overrated" chant when a home team is up big over a highly ranked team. The quality of the chants is good, but not great. They still sound like 75 people in the glee club are chanting...just this year, it sounds like they've masked it a bit with some noise to make it sound less clear. The college bands are similiar in that the timing and quality of the songs are excellent, but they still seem slightly over-produced.
The crowd responds well to big plays and the overall timing and crescendo is good. However, some depth of the crowd noise seems to be missing. My guess is that it's secondary noise, i.e. random crowd noises that always happen in a game that aren't part of the general din of the crowd. Regardless, these are minor issues. Overall, NCAA 2004 is a very good audio experience.
