Lets face it, 989 sucks. All their offerings on the PS2 thus far have been very poor, including NFL Gameday and the recently released NHL Face Off. Gamebreaker does not break 989's recent track record by any means even though it is an improvement over Gameday, but that isn't saying much at all. This is the only college football game available on Sony's next generation system so those who absolutely want that experience will have to learn to ignore Gamebreaker's many flaws. And if they can do this, you might even have a little fun with it. But lets make one thing known, I don't normally play football games so please pardon the lack of detail and just bare with me.

Gameplay
Despite the many flaws, which I'll get to a bit later, Gameday has most of the features you would expect in a football game. There are many play modes such as scrimmage, bowl season, tournament season, fantasy game and a coaching career. There is also blue chip recruiting and create walk-on options that you create your own player and add him to the roster. The game captures the college football authenticity with over 115 teams and 60 classic teams. Each team has it's own playbook, in all there is over 600 plays and 26 formations for you to utilize. Perhaps one of the game's best new features is the ability to pitch the ball by pressing L1 or R1. With this you can toss the ball off to another player before you get tackled.
The rest of the controls are similar to Gameday, on offense you can do fakes and dodges and speed bursts. Players also have to option of selecting the total control passing. This lets you lead, underthrow and overthrow the receivers allowing much more control over the ball. Most of the game's problems crop up in the AI and collision detection, which are both glitchy and done rather poorly. You'll notice the single mindedness of the opponent AI when you're running with the ball. All the opposition's players will follow you as if they are attached to you by a rope. They don't seem to act independently or try to cut you off. However once they do get near you it won't take them long to take you out. Some of the tackles look good, mainly the ones where you can see the two players interacting with each other during the hit but some other tackles just seem to send the guy flying for no reason.
Collision detection is extremely buggy. I would say that about 25-30% of the time when you try to tackle that you'll dive right through him! Also, a tackle can be done with equal force no matter what orientation a player is in. Even if he's got his back to the ball carrier he can instantly whip around and tackle him like Superman or something. It's not realistic and looks pretty stupid too. The only good thing about this is that you are freed from slow down of having to watch extra animations. Another bad part of the game is that once one player has tackled an opponent, the other players will go right through him so there can be no gang tackling and the pileups just look all wrong. There isn't really much interaction at all.
The game does have a fair amount of depth in terms of moves and settings so you can customize a game just how you want it. But learning all of the button commands can be a daunting task and many will simply go unused. Overall, Gamebreaker's gameplay flaws do not entirely ruin the game. For someone that doesn't take football too seriously or perhaps someone who has never played Madden 2001, they might find this game ok.

Graphics
If you saw Gameday than you've seen Gamebreaker, essentially they look the same and only the team jersey's have changed. The textures are far less detailed and polished than Madden and the player models look sloppy. It doesn't get any better with animations either as transitions often miss many frames and completely dismantle any effort at creating realistic movements. Weather effects are pretty low key as well. For example, playing during snow looks no different than in sunshine other than a cloudy sky and perfectly round snowflakes in the foreground; there is no fogging in the background whatsoever making the whole effect look cheap and totally unconvincing. This is hardly next generation material and it pains me to say that even the Dreamcast can do much better. At least the frame rate is good.

Sound
It's pretty standard, there isn't anything spectacular to hear. You'll hear the typical football themes and all the grunts and groans from a bone crunching match. The sound effects are fairly convincing but it's too bad there wasn't more bass in those hits. The commentary is one of the better aspects of the game actually, he calls the game well and is almost always talking about something (usually rambling on) but it is similar to what you would hear on a live TV broadcast.

Value
There is a good amount of options and play modes to keep the game interesting, but only if you can find a way to like this game. Those who have played some of the better football games out there like Madden 2001 and NFL2k1 need not even look at this game but college football enthusiasts may want to check it out.