Any ESPN College Hoops or March Madness reviews?

kevinpars · Post by **kevinpars** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 6:21 pm

I got a chance to play ESPN last night and it is a lot better than last year. Still not sure if it will be a ´winner´ in the way that NCAA Football or ESPN Football has become for me.
 
 The player movement is a little stilted, and occasionally I find that I can´t get a shot off quickly because the player is still in the middle of an animation (Happens when using the right stick on the PS2 to make a special move and then shooting). But the teams play different styles - Syracuse plays a 2-3, Duke plays a tight man, etc. The franchise is deep.
 
 You can pick up to 4 teams for a franchise (or whatever they call it) and you can also play any other game you wish to play. That way, if you lose early in the tourney, you can play other games if you want.
 
 I wish this game had something like the Sports Illustrated feature in NCAA Football. Not necessarily a magazine tie-in, but a place where you could go to see what ´big´ happened on a week-to-week basis. It would be fun to know if something unusual happened in a simmed game or if there was a big upset involving a team you don´t control. But to find that out takes a lot of looking around.
 
 I will be interested to see what Bill Abner and others will discover. It is way to early to say this game does the sport right. But it doesn´t have major problems that the game had last year.

sportdan30 · Post by **sportdan30** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 6:53 pm

Kevin,
 
 I´m having an absolute blast with the game so far. This is coming from someone who had a great dislike for the game last year. It just feels more complete than its NBA counterpart. Iso-motion is easier to control. The atmosphere is second to none, and the courts are gorgeous. Teams really seem to play to their strengths....meaning the best player will take the majority of the shots. While there still is a problem here and there about controlled players taking short jump shots instead of laying it up, they seem to be few and far between. The sliders actually work and a notch or two here and there really seems to make a huge difference. I haven´t gotten involved in the "legacy" aspect yet, but I´m hearing some really great things about it.
 
 Someone mentioned in another post that there tends to be an arcadish choppiness to the players running the floor. The solution to this is to lower the speed rating for both yourself and the CPU. Keep it on "normal" speed, but lower the speed rating in the slider section. I´m going to test that out tonight. Some said to even lower it all the way down. It doesn´t bother me too much the way it is right now, but if I can find a realistic flow.....all the better.
 
 I´m going to attempt to rent MM this Friday, but I´d love to hear your take on it whenever. Either way, I think there´s going to be a college hoops game that everyone will enjoy.

kevinpars · Post by **kevinpars** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 11:26 am

Well, I have now played both games and here are my initial thoughts. Keep in mind that this is based on two nights of playing ESPN and one night of March Madness. As Bill Abner would say, that is too short a period of time to base a review. This is not a review as much as a gripe session.
 
 There are a lot of things I did not like about March Madness.
 
 Let me talk about the things I do like in March Madness:
 
 The player movement is nice and fluid. But this is an opinion. I don´t want to get into a comparison with ESPN about player models, etc. Let me just say that the 5 man motion cap is nice. The courts look nice as well. Crowds are not as good as ESPN. The key word is that the game is fluid. However, when I switched over to play ESPN Hoops, I DID NOT find myself wishing I was still playing MM. I noticed that the colors are a bit brighter in MM, but again, nothing earth shattering as far as one game being superior to the other.
 
 Let me talk about the things I don´t like. Keep in mind that some of these issues may pop up in ESPN College Hoops. But here is what i have seen so far in March Madness:
 
 In the PS2 version - or at least my copy of the game - the response time moving through menus and screens is very sluggish and not very responsive. Especially in dynasty mode. If you try to scroll through the Sporting News screens for the year, you will have to wait about 3 seconds for each week´s cover to load. This was not an issue in NCAA Football. The sluggish feel to things got frustrating very quickly. There is no way that I would be able to go through a dynasty in March Madness for long. It would be like playing a PC game on an outdated CPU. Keep in mind that I am talking about the interface. The response times in the game is just fine.
 
 As far as gameplay is concerned, there are a few issues with the EA basketball engine that continue to piss me off. Even with the sliders turned up for both teams, offensive rebounding is a joke. I had one game where each team had about 40 total rebounds. One team had 5 offensive rebounds and the other 6. That is with the slider turned up all the way. Your offensive players do not fight for offensive rebounds. Nor do they defend the post. The AI will drive to the basket and it will be up to you to take control of a post player to step in and prevent the easy dunk or layup. Your AI teammates will not do it for you.
 
 Some things about the dynasty mode really, really pissed me off. I started a dynasty as FSU. First off, you can only select 1 team. In ESPN you can select 4. Also, in ESPN, in the standard dynasty mode you can choose to play any game. This is a big issue with me. In MM, you can play your team´s games and that is is. If you don´t make the big dance, then you can look at the sim results from the brackets. Compare this to NCAA Football, where you could play every single game if you wished. Why can´t EA get this right. If I was back in college, this would make the game choice real easy. Pick ESPN and get some buddies and start a dynasty.
 
 Another problem that REALLY BOTHERS ME is the scheduling. In February, FSU has a game at Maryland. Several days later they played UNC at home. This was followed 2 days later by a road game AT UNC. Followed by a road game AT MARYLAND! I can live without the real life schedule in the game, but a home and home with a conference opponent?? Never happens in real life. I think (not sure) that ESPN has the real schedule for 2003-2004. Either way, this sort of scheduling issue should not happen. But in MM it does. I think it is just as important that UNC and Duke meet at the end of the regular season in basketball as in football. Some things are traditions. Imagine if in NCAA Football if Michigan met Ohio State in September. It would be close to a game killer.
 
 I did not check the brackets for the tourney very carefully to see if another old MM blemish showed up. In past years, you would often get teams in the same conference meeting in the first round of the NCAA tournament. I hope they fixed this for MM 2004, but I did not verify it. But the season schedule issues bugged me. In the 2 brackets I saw in ESPN, things looked good. Conference foes did not meet early in the tournament. (Note: this probably was an issue in years past in MM because MM did not have all of the D1 teams. With over 300 teams this year, that issue may be gone).
 
 As for the atmosphere, I thought both games were pretty good but both could use some improvement. Personally, Dick Vitale gets on my nerves. Like Madden, I respect the real person and don´t have huge issues with their real life game calls, but in a video game, the schtick gets old after about 30 seconds. Too bad, because the play by play is fine. I much prefer the ability to generate fake names in ESPN and I also like the ease with which I can create a starting five of me and my friends and have the names announced in the game. The Sega system is a dream for name editing. With a names database, you can avoid typing ´Kevin" just type KE and you can pick the name from the list. Simple and easy to find out what names are in the voice database and easy to change or name players in ESPN hoops. I could rename a team in about 5 minutes in ESPN, it would take considerably longer in MM.
 
 There may be issues with ESPN College Hoops that rear their ugly head. But for now, it is the game I think will get more of my playing time. With the speed slider toned down (Keep game speed at ´normal´ and turn down speed slider for AI and human teams) and the ESPN game plays plenty smooth and fluid for my purposes. Anyone else want to chime in??

sportdan30 · Post by **sportdan30** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 11:47 am

Kevin,
 
 Very informative first impressions. I haven´t picked up MM yet, but will most likely do so this weekend. Wanted to see if you could verify one possibly huge error concerning MM. That is the absence of the majority of freshmen on a roster. Someone posted at OS that over 70% of the freshmen are left out of the game. His one prime example were the the twin freshmen from Kentucky who are omitted from the game. Is it difficult to see whether or not most of the rosters are accurate? That would be a huge game killer for me.
 
 I do believe ESPN has the correct schedules for every team. In addition, when I went to start my season with the Kansas Jayhawks, a message popped up inviting me to participate in a tournament out in CA (The Wooden Classic). What´s cool is that it actually is on their schedule of games to play this year.
 
 To me, ESPN feels like a complete game. I don´t feel as though this game was overlooked by the developers. They took the game seriously and it shows. I almost think that this game is more complete in terms of gameplay than its NBA counterpart. I´m not getting that impression thus far from MM.