The year after a championship can be tricky. You may be the team to beat, but you still have a long road ahead of you as you try to recapture that magic. Last year, EA came out with a great college football product that captured the feeling of the sport. “NCAA Football 12” builds upon “NCAA 11” with a list of improvements, but how much better is it?

Going into this review, I was most interested in “NCAA 12’s” promise to fix the magnet tackles and catches from years past. For the most part, developer EA Tiburon succeeded, yet the game feels much like it always has. The new tackling button doesn’t create unrealistic whiffs, nor does the catch button facilitate unbelievable grabs. You won’t see wide receivers slide across the field towards the ball or tackle animations engage too soon. True multi-defender gang tackles don’t occur, either, although they look better than they did last year because multiple defenders can throw their weight around to change the trajectory of the runner.

The franchise’s improvements, however, are balanced by an ongoing problem — the AI’s lack of ball awareness. While I’m glad that receivers don’t magically shoot forward to make catches, there are times when the opposite happens — the ball sails by them and they don’t even put their hands up to catch it. The AI’s ball awareness improves as you move away from the default difficulty, but even then you’ll see the occasional defender letting the ball carrier run by without attempting a tackle or an AI QB make some glaringly bad throwing choices. At least defenders are more aggressive, moving fluidly in their zones, jumping passes, and providing tighter coverage in general.

“NCAA’s” gameplay wrestles with the constant process of improving the past, and I think Dynasty mode’s new Coaching Carousel reveals a need to update the series’ recruiting component. The Coaching Carousel lists goal-based expectations that influence your coaching prestige and keep you gainfully employed. This provides more structure to Dynasty mode, but it didn’t change how I went about my business. Recruiting was renovated just last year, but I wish the points you get for talking to recruits were more spread out and distinct (right now you can get a similar amount of points for seemingly disparate answers) and that recruiting encompassed the physical and mental traits of players instead of just discovering whether they like the campus weight room. Improving recruiting could take the coaching experience to the next level.

Road to Glory’s additions are more numerous than the Dynasty changes, but stop short of being a full overhaul. Earning coach’s trust through your play and working your way up the depth chart isn’t hard, and I have mixed feelings about the mode. It’s fun to upgrade your player and unlock the ability to call audibles, but that’s all stuff that I wish I had from the beginning.

“NCAA 12” is better than “NCAA 11,” and yet I feel like we’ve come to the point in the series’ lifecycle where the changes, while all worthwhile, are getting harder to notice. Perhaps that’s because all of the hard work has already been done.

Consider the game’s online dynasties, which are already full-featured enough that one of its main new additions — being able to sim ahead a week from your computer — is an optional pay-to-play feature. When things are going this good, it seems insane to ask for an overhaul of some core features like recruiting. But as they always say in football, you’ve got to fight for every yard.

‘NCAA Football 12’

9 (out of 10)

PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

EA Sports, EA Tiburon

ESRB rating: E for Everyone

New game releases

The following titles were scheduled for release the week of July 17:

• “Dead Block” (PS3)

• “Bastion” (X360)

• “Just Dance Summer Party” (Wii)

• “The Smurfs: Dance Party” (Wii)

• “The Smurfs” (DS)

• “Captain America: Super Soldier” (DS, Wii, X360, PS3)

• “Fallout: New Vegas — Old World Blues” (X360, PC, PS3)

• “Call of Juarez: The Cartel” (X350, PS3)

— Gamespot.com

Top 10

HANDHELD GAMES

The editors of Game Informer Magazine rank the top 10 handheld games for July:

1. “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” (3DS)

2. “Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D” (3DS)

3. “Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection” (PSP)

4. “Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars” (3DS)

5. “Street Fighter IV 3D Edition” (3DS)

6. “Radiant Historia” (DS)

7. “Pokemon Black/White” (DS)

8. “Monster Tale” (DS)

9. “Okamiden” (DS)

10. “Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation” (DS)

— McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Mini review

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”

Reviewed for: PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (also available for Wii, Windows PC, Nintendo DS)

From: EA Bright Light/EA/WB Games

ESRB Rating: T for Teen

Price: $50

Do you love Harry Potter — like really, really love him? Because you’ll have to if you want to enjoy the opening levels of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” which rocket from banal to passable if your undying love of the film compels you to experience it through the eyes of one seriously basic third-person cover shooter with some alarmingly flimsy weaponry.

Like the first “Deathly Hallows” game, the new “Hallows” takes on the characteristics of a third-person shooter — a reflection on the book and movie’s action-heavy focus, but a stark departure nonetheless from previous “Potter” games, which were non-linear and focused more on spells and discovery than blasting hundreds — no, seriously, literally hundreds — of Death Eaters into oblivion. That is what you do in “Hallows’” brief campaign, which drops the preceding game’s sloppy stealth portions in favor of wall-to-wall carnage. Though the stealth portions certainly aren’t missed, the straight line the new “Hallows” walks makes it harder to ignore how elementary it is as a shooter.

— Billy O’Keefe, McClatchy-Tribune News Service