The headline feature for '06 is a new mode in addition to Dynasty: Race for the Heisman. It's billed as an opportunity to create a custom player and go after the Heisman Trophy – experiencing the competition against players your teams will never face and the attention of a relentless national media.

At the start of Race for the Heisman, you'll give your player a last name, then choose a position: running back, quarterback (pocket or scrambler), wide receiver, linebacker (good luck) and others that have no real chance of winning the award in the real world. Depending on your position, you'll go through one of a few drills. Runners do an Oklahoma, passers do a skeleton passing drill (no pass rush) and running QBs run the option. The drill takes around ten minutes and your player ratings will be based on your performance. You'll get three offers, but they're only for show because you can walk on anywhere.

And no matter where you go or how you score, you'll be the starter. Forget Matt Leinart, your mediocre freshman QB will start as long as you pick USC. From there, RftH mode is mostly like the existing dynasty option, with a few exceptions. Instead of the usual menu screen, you'll run your season from a dorm room. You'll have no control over recruiting and can only change the depth chart during a game. In exchange for those features, there's a section for fan letters and access to the same drills as before.

To sum up: The biggest difference between RftH and dynasty are a few minutes of drill at the beginning and the lack of control over recruiting. For this, they brought Desmond Howard out of retirement. Race for the Heisman could have been interesting. As executed in this game, it's completely irrelevant.

On every team are a few impact players. They're identified on each team by a white circle at their feet, and they represent the best of the best. Throughout a game, they'll have intermittent periods of being "in the zone." During those periods, they can pull off feats of superhuman stature – breaking tackles no one could break, catching everything in sight or knocking down blockers like so many bowling pins. The idea seems like a throwback to being on fire in Blitz or NBA Jam.

Any attempt at realism is destroyed by the implementation of impact players in '06. There's no way around that fact, but even so, it doesn't ruin the game for everyone. Impact players aren't completely unstoppable and they don't stay in the zone very long. Keeping track of them is just one more challenge. But it would be nice to simply have the option of turning it off. It's also silly to hear Brad announce, "that linebacker is IN THE ZONE and looking to make a play," in case you don't notice his flashing, white circle.

But the worst feature offender is in dynasty mode – dear, sweet dynasty. It's been marred by a glarring flaw since last year (NCAA '05), and it doesn't seem to have been touched. The discipline system is meant to replicate the challenge facing college coaches at high levels. Students get in trouble, and you can either ignore their indiscretions so they don't miss playing time or you can suspend them. If you let them play, the NCAA might investigate. If you suspend everyone you have very little chance of being competitive.

Every dynasty starts the year with a certain number of points to spend on discipline. A one quarter suspension costs a lot less than a game and a season and so on. Players get caught being late for team meetings, getting bad grades, accepting money, etc. If you let them slide, the NCAA will take an ever-increasing interest in your program. At some point, you might be slapped with the death penalty.

Here's the problem – if you want to run a clean program you'll run out of discipline points. That means by the end of the season, you might have a player getting away with murder and if you don't have enough points you can't do a thing about it. What's worse is getting banned from bowl games without any explanation. And in the game the NCAA seems to care whether a player misses a team meeting when in actuality they couldn't care less. Bottom line – it's impossible to replicate true discipline management using this system and you can't turn it off. There's nothing logical about the way it works and a modicum of research by whoever created it would have gone a long way. Two years is a long time to put up with a broken feature that nearly ruins the central mode of the game.

Ultimately, features outside of gameplay are only icing on the cake and it can be easy to overlook them if a great game of football awaits. But most of the problems from last year are still around. Wide open receivers drop balls constantly. And it's not because of composure or home field advantage. At home, away, with the house rockin' or quiet as a church, wide open receivers drop more balls than they catch. If you find an open man and get the ball there at the right time, most of the time it should get caught. It's that simple.

In spite of the inability of receivers to catch easy passes, they do wonderfully with long bombs. At first, it seemed long bombs were almost unstoppable. But once you learn to control a safety and simply interfere with or at least double cover the long ball it's no longer a threat. Pass interference, and most other penalties, doesn't get called very often. Other than a facemask several times a game (over which you have no control) you won't see many flags.

The offensive play calling is baffling. The opponent never adjusts to obvious defensive trends. Last year's review process discovered that computer opponents could be corralled indefinitely with one defensive play for an entire game. This is still the case. When the computer is trailing in the second half, there will be almost no running. There is more running than last year, especially in a close game, and that's a step in the right direction. But if you get a lead, you may as well call a prevent defense and wait for the passes – because they'll keep coming in most cases.

Occasionally, late in the game, the cpu decides to run even if it's a terrible idea. Down by six with 48 seconds to play and the ball on their own 34 yard line, Texas decided to run the ball against Georgia four times in a row. Four plays, 48 seconds left, four runs. Unless you helped write code or test NCAA '06, you can guess how the game ended.

Quarterback accuracy is horrible. No matter the situation, quarterbacks will often miss the easiest throws. Tossing the ball out to the flat, over the middle to open receivers – name a routine play – even the best passers in the nation will far too often throw the ball right into the ground. And the cpu quarterback still loves to throw the ball at receivers well out of bounds far too often.

Kick and punt returns are far too easy to return. It doesn't help that returners have moments of Csonkian proportions. Ted Ginn, Jr, for example, one of the fastest players in the country and a devastating kick returner, should return a fair amount of kicks for TDs. But he shouldn't be doing it because he ran people over. Seeing him steamroll linebackers is comical. The charge and break tackle options kick in at the strangest times in favor of the strangest players.

Ultimately, you'll win a lot of games, but it won't be becauase you understand football, have excellent reflexes or recruited the best talent. It will be because you blitz often and the computer has little chance of picking it up. It will be because running over defenders is too easy and the opposing quarterbacks are unable to throw accurately.

NCAA '06 is easily mastered after a few games at All-American difficulty. Moving to Heisman difficulty (the highest) makes the game much harder in certain ways. Running the football is almost prohibitively difficult – blockers aren't very effective and defenders are all extremely fast.

This is where sliders should come in handy. After tweaking sliders, play at Heisman was improved. Running the football became possible but challenging. What never improved was the pass catching, pass blocking, or offensive AI. Cranking pass catching way up made long bombs more reliable than ever and short, open passes were still dropped like hot potatoes. Blitzing was still the defensive money play – hardly any offensive lines can handle a blitz throughout the course of a game. One big difference between this game and the '05 version is that many sliders seem to have no affect whatsoever.

One feature for which NCAA '06 should be commended are slider codes. After tweaking several different sliders, users can now record and share a code of a few letters and numbers which replicate those sliders at any time. This is the chip clip of sports games – someone should have thought of this sooner. It's a great idea – too bad so many sliders in NCAA '06 are meaningless.

Another nice option is a mass substitution during blowouts. You can put in the whole second team if you want to, instead of subbing in one player at a time. But if you're watching the Heisman race, you won't really have the chance. Simmed stats by other top stars are above and beyond what any player could really accomplish. For example, Leinart threw an average of 41 TDs and 6 interceptions in three simmed seasons. That's an average. It's a good thing deep passes are easy, because your numbers need to be insane if you want that trophy. Slider codes and mass subs are both nice options and show some forethought, but the game still doesn't offer an in-game save.

The game is, in some ways, different from last year. It's better in one or two minor ways. The graphics on the field look a little sharper (better grass and some new player animations) and the game does not slow down during busy plays.

In some ways, it's worse: Race for the Heisman is a complete waste of time and it's utterly illogical even to the most casual fan of college football. The simulated stats by computer-controlled teams are absurd and make Heisman competition a laughing matter.

But in most ways, it's the same as the previous few years. And so is my recommendation – don’t bother.