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NCAA March Madness 07

Score: 8.0 / 10

The madness is nearly here once again: 65 teams begin on the same road, only one completes the journey. Fantastically entertaining, the yearly NCAA basketball tournament, affectionately known as March Madness, produces some classic and memorable moments. Last-second buzzer-beaters. Cinderella stories of unlikely teams making an unexpected run at a championship. Unlikely heroes stepping up to carry their team to glory. And finally, one school gets called champion. There’s really nothing else like it in the world of sports.

Over the years, Electronic Arts’ NCAA March Madness franchise has captured that spirit of the tournament with varying degrees of quality, although generally being a very good college hoops game despite being seriously challenged and overtaken in the opinion of many by the competing college basketball title, 2K Sports’ College Hoops.

In its first showing on the Xbox 360, however, EA’s franchise has found its way back on the glory road toward being the definitive college basketball series with

 

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much-improved visuals, a stellar, upgraded Dynasty Mode and better gameplay, although NCAA March Madness 07 still needs some more fine-tuning to return to being the undeniable champ of college basketball video gaming.

As a whole, NCAA March Madness 07 still possesses its most redeeming quality —  capturing the true aura of college basketball with a great representation of the actual arenas, each 

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with its own distinctive touches, and the excitement and pure craziness at times of the college basketball crowds in attendance. The use of fight songs along with the cheering and chanting of the people in the seats watching the game brings a level of realism that EA has perfected, especially in its college basketball, college football and soccer titles. Nobody does it better than EA at giving gamers a true feel for the electric atmosphere surrounding sporting events.

But deflecting away from some of the amazing realism and college basketball flavor present in NCAA March Madness 07 is a few flagrant fouls, not the least of which is the tepid announcing tandem of Dick Vitale and Brad Nessler. I don’t really care for Vitale’s bombastic real-life announcing style, but he’s usually tolerable during actual ESPN telecasts, and Brad Nessler I consider one of the better announcers ESPN has in its broadcaster stable. But here, in NCAA March Madness 07, neither is very good, and that’s especially shocking on Nessler’s part. Maybe it’s just too hard to really be excited and up to the usual high standards of both Vitale’s and Nessler’s announcing without them actually sitting there watching a real game, but there’s not the same level of quality here as in their real ESPN playcalling and announcing.

On the gameplay side, NCAA March Madness 07 is solid for the most part, but there are a few areas in need of improvement. On the good side, the controls are responsive to your desired actions being translated through your controller. The control setup is once again masterful, allowing for different types of actions depending on the situation. O offense, you can choose lay-ups or outside shots using different controller buttons, and can even use more sophisticated shots, such as a fade-away jumper, using a combination of controls. Post-up moves are especially useful when backing down defenders with one of your big men near the hoop. There are the “special” moves available once again, such as crossover dribbles and spins, that allow for even more options to create better scoring chances. Defensively, the Lockdown Stick provides many chances to create turnovers or to force bad shots.

Accentuating your defensive and offensive game is Floor General Playcalling. With the Floor General Playcalling, you can call both offensive and defensive strategies, such as the pick-and-roll on offense and the half-court trap on defense, that can maximize your likelihood of winning, particularly the defensive Floor General Playcalling, which can produce a plethora of turnovers and steals if used at the right time during a game.

Part of the gameplay experience is the Sims-like player composure, where each player can get a plus or negative added to or subtracted from their composure meter based on how they and their team are doing on the court. Get a few good plays strung together, and the Team Intensity Control will fire up your team and really boost the overall team’s composure meter, pushing and pulling the momentum your way.

However, although overall a good-playing basketball title, NCAA March Madness 07 has some annoying gameplay elements. While on offense, you better make the most of your first shot, because for the most part that’s all you're going to get. Offensive rebounding is practically nonexistent, as you’ll see very little rebounding from your team off the offensive glass. Expect it to be one-and-done offensive possessions all game long. Another infuriating component is the ridiculous amount of foul calls you’ll get against you, even when you’re not controlling the actual fouling player, instead leaving it up to your assisting A.I. to play defense for that particular hoopster. You’ll get into foul trouble with not just one or two select players. No, expect to have your entire team struggling to stay on the court before the fifth foul earns them a permanent seat on the bench.

Countering those few bothersome facets is a marvelous amount of game modes to delve into, including a very deep and enriched Dynasty mode, which now has more features than ever before, including School Pride, where you can upgrade the campus of your school and expand your team’s facilities to garner more support amongst the student body, administrators, alumni and fans. There is even a increased presence of recruiting, as you can play, for the first time in the franchise, the yearly McDonald’s High School All-American Game, where all the blue chip recruits show off their skills before heading off to college stardom. You have all the tools at your fingertips to build a title-winning college dynasty.

Other modes allow you to play in the NIT and Maui Invitational tourneys, or just jump straight into the madness with a NCAA Championship tournament. Additionally, there is a very good Xbox Live online mode, and those connected online can access the all-encompassing ESPN Integration, with live podcast feeds from ESPN Radio and a real-time ESPN Sports Ticker giving you the latest scores from the real world of sports. You can even watch highlights from real college games through ESPN Motion.

One area that no doubt has improved is the visual quality of NCAA March Madness 07. This definitely was a franchise in need of an extreme makeover graphically, as for a while, including the game’s ’06 rendition on the Xbox, the players themselves and even the crowds in the stands were really badly rendered, being downright ugly. The players looked nonrealistic in appearance, so much so that you almost thought you were playing a version of NBA Jam, with big-headed, squished-bodied players running up and down the court. EA used the next-generation power of the Xbox 360 to drastically improve the overall look to the entire game, including more lifelike players.

While NCAA March Madness 07 isn’t without flaws in both its gameplay and presentation values, there certainly is a vast improvement from the franchise’s final appearance on the original Xbox last year. A strong first showing on the Xbox 360 has Electronic Arts back in the championship hunt for the best college hoops title versus 2K Sports’ College Hoops, particularly considering the excellent Dynasty Mode and on-the-fly Floor General Playcalling that vastly can improve the gameplay once you acclimate to using it effectively.

But there is still room for definite improvement. NCAA March Madness needs to fix the offensive rebounding aspect, improve its presentation values and ratchet up your team’s assisting A.I. to perform more realistically based on the situation, especially when players are in foul trouble, before it can undeniably cut down the twine in celebratory fashion as being universally better than the aforementioned 2K Sports’ college basketball title.

- Lee Cieniawa

lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(February 27, 2007)

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