We respect how Black College Football: The Xperience celebrates an aspect of the sport that EA’s NCAA series never has, and we admire the indie drive and enthusiasm it took to get the game made. So it pains us to have to say that it’s just not too fun to play.

What BCFx (as Aspyr has acronym-ized the game) gets right is the spotlight it shines on football at HBCUs — historically black colleges and universities. There’s a pretty nifty in-game museum with good info on the schools, their players, and their history. And since the marching bands are big-ticket stuff at HBCUs, Nerjyzed (the dev) built in a pretty entertaining playable halftime show. If you rock the crowd with some music-game note-matching, you’re rewarded with some handy skill-boosting tokens that can make the difference in the second half.

Sadly, the core gameplay just doesn’t have the depth and polish to keep you playing long-term. With no in-depth Dynasty-style mode and no Live play, you’ll spend most of your time in what’s essentially a season mode that takes you through a fall schedule to a championship. It’s just too bare-bones to keep you playing as long as the game’s $60 price would lead you to expect.

Plus, the game’s just not polished enough. Visually, it looks fairly sharp, especially the animations, but stutters and momentary freezes often stall the action. The incredibly tiny playbooks leave you squinting at the screen, and they’re not at all structured to be easy to use. The A.I. makes some iffy decisions, especially when it comes to clock management…though maybe it was confused because in one of our games, play continued for two more downs after the clock ran out in the first half!

So yeah, suffice it to say that playing BCFx requires a fan’s patience and generous spirit. And if the game does find the kind of audience that gets a sequel greenlit, we’d love to see Nerjyzed get the chance to get it all right with BCFx 2.

On Xbox 360

+ A loving celebration of HBCU football.

- No career or dynasty modes; no online play.

- Really needs more polish.

? When are more developers and publishers going to be brave enough to take on EA Sports?

5.5