NCAA March Madness 2000
Reviewed by Dyson Turner
NCAA March Madness 2000 is an excellent game. Despite what
you may have heard from others this game is one of the most
realistic basketball simulations out there. When I decided
to buy March Madness 2000 I was think it would be like NBA
Live but with college teams. I was wrong on that assumption
this game is no where near NBA Live, or even close to it.
Although since the controls are basically the same any great
NBA Live player could adapt to the way March Madness plays.
This game when you first see it may look pretty cheesy and
it may not have the flashy graphics that the Pro version
has. But I have to say you must put that aside, because this
game in terms of depth is better than NBA Live.
When I first played the game I didn't know what to expect
because of what I heard about it. Yeah it is flawed just
like almost every playstation game out there. This game has
its fair share of problems as well. Like for instance the
game is just too defensive minded too many block shot's pass
interceptions ball rips and rebounds. Then the game doesn't
stay true to the stats. Having a 70% 3 pt shooter that never
miss, even on the Senior Level. But this is not like Live
where you put it on the hardest level and brick everything
except dunks, they actually increases the defense of the
opposing team and they make a lot of smart offensive
decisions. When I realized that after a few games I realized
that is what I always wanted a game where they made it hard
to go in the whole and do a dunk. A game where you could
steal more passes go on fast breaks and get the dunk. Not
every 5 seconds like the Live series.
Then you look at the graphics again the players are all non
descript looking and the camera looks bad. There is no real
detail on anything the audience and the players on the bench
all look very flat and lifeless they don't even move or
flash when you make dunks. Then you listen to the music you
have a lot of big band themes playing while you are
adjusting options or doing things on the pause screen. Then
you have the commentary, the most annoying commentator in
history Dick 'I'm annoying and won't shut up' Vitale.
Although some like him screaming incoherent statements every
time you jam hard or do something I don't. Then you have
actual on the court action which when you get use to it is
better than NBA Live. How about 7 types of cross overs? How
about fake cross overs and stutter steps fake spins all of
the moves the ohh and ahh on the parquet are all here.
Then on top of that how about over 150 real Collegiate
Basketball squads and the Women's Sweet 16. Actually even
though not to sound chauvinist I hate Women's basketball, I
had a lot more fun playing the women game than the man game.
Btu the only bad part is I think you can only use the
woman's teams when you do the Sweet 16 and not during the
rest of the game play, because the woman game is a lot more
cooler than the male game. Then you have modes like the
season mode, which is Dynasty mode, and Dynasty is way more
realistic than anything. Well considering the fact that you
can't trade just like in real college life really hampers
things. Because when you star point goes down you have to
make somebody from scratch if your bench is about as deep as
a shot glass. All these little things actually make the game
more fun for diehards or stat fans.
Visuals 8. 0/10
The game just doesn't fair well in the graphics department.
The game looks like NBA Live 97, and almost all the camera
angles are bad. Then it seems since this game is so
defensive that everyone crowds the whole and everything
looks blindingly distorted. There is just too much going on
in the game at one time no spacing, no actual plays, it
reminds me of street basketball. Everyone is clogging up the
hole no one on the perimeter. The actual court it self I
have to say it looked pretty decent. The size of the players
was also pretty normal everything looked very good in that
matter. The way the player moved was very fluid, and when
you had enough room to actually see this you could tell EA
Sports really put a lot in the way the characters moved and looked.
I think the dunk animation could have used some work. There
just wasn't enough dunking in the game and in my opinion
this is pretty bad I think this game had a total of 6 dunks
which compared to the pro game it had about 15. But doing
any dunk in this game will be impressive, because it is
pretty hard to do unless you find a hole in the interior
defense. But on the other hand the cross overs were slower
and you could see every slick move of when you shook
somebody. Then the shot animation as well it was a fluent
jump and a little kick back and it looked perfect. The part
I particularly liked was when you nailed a long distance 3
pointer how they would kick their legs out in true fashion
of when you really nail one.
Then there was the graphics bad besides the dunks. The
players all had just about the same faces no individual
faces were found for anyone. So in my opinion that was a bad
job done by EA. Even though I do realize this is college
hoops and you can't really advertise the guys because of
NCAA rules. They could of made some of the players resemble
some of the real athletes of the college floor. This sadly
was never found in any team I played as when I knew a few of
the players I notice that all they had was the haircut and
facial hair as the real player, but other than that they had
no resemblance.
Overall though with just these small things happening the
graphics were pretty good. They won't impress you and they
certainly don't use the full power of the playstation they
do the job. It resembles basketball it's 3D and basically
it's just slightly better than some of the other basketball
games on the market. The cross over animation and the nice
size of the players make up the whole graphic department if
it weren't for that then this game would of not been as
enjoyable to play. Bottom line is the graphics just faired
as average and I think they could have done a better job than this.
Audio 8. 5/10
Well the songs in this game were fabulous, they were a lot
of old college fight songs that just gave you the feeling
that you were back in High school playing football or
basketball. The songs were really done in true big band
fashion and they all sounded well. The chants from the crowd
have got to be some of the best ever in a basketball game.
They really showed enthusiasm as the game got deeper in and
it made it more fun to play. They had chants for everything
when you were going for the 3 and the always awesome sudden
hush when the away team jammed on a hyped up home crowd near
the end of the second half. The fans were always there and
they were so loud that they really did mess with you while
you were playing especially if you were behind and you
didn't have much time to go.
Then besides that you had the commentary. Dick Vitale and
some other dude supply it. Dick Vitale is loud and very
annoying, I hate his comments especially when I'm losing he
really gets on my nerves. With the jibberish he spews really
screws up the mode. Although the other dude was pretty
decent saying normal things and wasn't loud and crazy. I
didn't mind Madden being loud and annoying but Vitale takes
it to a new extreme. I wish there was a way to keep the
regular guy on and to turn Vitale off I would mind if he
just said one thing or two things but he keeps going. I
laugh at the fact that they call 'featuring Dick Vitale' a
feature on the back of the box. If I were to have saw that I
would of not bought this game.
Besides Dick Vitale being annoying this game had some pretty
decent sound effects. Aside from the crowd's rants you had a
lot of sounds like the squeak of sneakers the ball slightly
dribbling and the rim rocking loud dunk. You also sounded
very realistic when lets say a player hit the hardwood after
a hard foul. Even the airhorn sounded real like they sound
in a college basketball game. So if you don't put commentary
on the sounds and chants of the crowd can really lift this
game for you. Overall this game had some great sound effects
as well as crowd chants.
Over the music sound effects and chants did it for me. If it
weren't for Dick Vitale I would be giving this game a
perfect score. But he is vastly annoying and I'm glad I'm
not the only one who feels this way. The sounds of the game
always add a lot to the game for me and this one did so. The
basic sound the music and everything is toe tapping NCAA
action at it's best. The only problem I had was with the
commentary not just Vitale these guys were just too late and
bad with saying stuff. For instance I hit a 3 that rattles
as soon as you strike iron the dude says it rimmed out in
reality it didn't. This might be small to most but in my
opinion I didn't like that. Other than that the music faired well.
Game Play 10/10
This game is for 1 to 8 players. You have 150 men squads to
chose from plus some cool game features. You also have 16
women's team to do the sweet 16 with, and on top of that you
have some classic teams to battle against your new team. You
also have the Dynasty mode which I will explain in more in
depth in the next paragraph. For now the actual game has
good and realistic basketball mechanics. Besides the high
defensive rates shots go down put back are very easy to do.
Big Feature CROSS OVERS ACTUALLY WORK!!! This right here
amazed as I used my ultra fast created player and dusted the
D with a few press of the square button, you can actually
see the get confused as you kill them with a cross over.
The Dynasty mode is the real bread and butter of this game.
This is where you take your favorite or local collegiate
team from a 'just missing the dance' team to a top 10
team. It won't be easy you will have to play hard and play
well, because those big name teams are pretty fearless and
they take no prisoners. Mandatory senior mode for the top 25
was an excellent idea. This game is not for babies no
dumping on Duke in Freshmen mode, this separates the boy's
from the men. You can also adjust your schedule put it on
cake for a soft schedule, random for a good blend of better
and lower teams, and finally the hard mode for all top rung
teams. Of course you will get a few dudes thrown in. The
hard mode, is the easiest way to get you on the Polls.
Besides that in Dynasty Mode you can create your own player.
Creating your own player is very fun. Of course this is
college so no names will apply, plus no cheating by giving
your man all 99's you have to balance them out you get more
points if you put them in a higher grade. So just make good
seniors when one of your regulars get hurt to fill in the
gaps. Create a player on this is decent but it's not yet as
good as live because you can't see the faces as close as you
can so in that factor the create a player is bad. But other
than that this games Create a player stacks up with some of
the best out there.
Then besides that you can recruit players. Although
recruiting doesn't come to the end of your first year you
can lay claim to players. Most of the time however if you
happen to be not so good at the game you will not get any
top prospects. Try and look for some decent players to fill
in the gap of graduating seniors. At this point I think only
seniors left I never had a jr or any younger players left
yet. Recruiting is easy but if you are lazy freshmen walk on
will take the place if you couldn't get anyone to join your
squad. I think this feature could have used some work you
have to have a great squad in order to get anyone good out
of high school.
I had some problems with this game namely the fact that you
couldn't get any new players during the season only through
creation. To me there should have been a pool of players who
were available that you could sign during the season and not
have to constantly create new players until a player comes
off his injury. I think they should of worked this out
because haven't player always injured sort of messes up your
team and you slump in the game, but besides that this game
was pretty promising. I really like the momentum meter
feature. The momentum feature was a cool idea where the
audience was seemingly involved. If you were home and got a
full meter the audience got real loud and rowdy and you were
nailing everything. If your away and you get a full meter
the audience is very quiet and are withdrawn from the game.
Then the other mode Sweet 16 was a lot of fun. Pick your
favorite out of the 16 and take these 12 lucky ladies to the
top of collegiate women's basketball. Coolest thing about
this mode is you don't have any dumb Vitale to listen to.
You get the arena announcer which is a lot better and I
actually could concentrate and enjoy the game. The Women's
game just like real life is slightly different than the
man's game. Since most of the women are around the same size
you don't get as much as packed interior. You get more of a
perimeter game and the game goes by much faster than the
man's game. Not as many blocks shots not as many rebounds
but a ton more steals and crossovers are found. My only
problem is you can't do an intergender game with men and
women that would have made the game slightly better.
Overall in game play the game was done well. It had good
actual basketball mechanics and it only had a few flaws and
it was only lacking in certain places, some of the places
where obvious. Like with the over exaggerated defense, and
too many blocks shots and steals. Even though you can
actually lessen the amount of block shots and steals the
computer does, it doesn't help you will still get your shot
muffed. I don't know how difficult the game is on Freshmen
mood I refer to this on Senior mode only and how it plays on
there. Although this game have a lot of pluses like
crossovers and fake dribbles, and an easy working head fake
that you can do on the move. All of this makes the game seem
better and makes it slightly more fun. Even though this game
is obvious geared towards an more advanced video game
basketball player I still believe there is something here
for the beginners as well. The difficulty was adjustable and
this game took from 1 to 14 blocks of memory. The 14 block
dynasty mode was very unfair to play a season you had to get
a new memory card or do a little 's pring cleaning' to fix
up an old one.
Overall 9.0 out of 10
This is a very good game but it just falls slightly short of
a perfect score. The actual basketball mechanics were good
and all the teams and the old teams and women's team were
great but it still had it's fair share of problems which
just couldn't be overlook as a player or a reviewer. There
was just certain parts o the game I just didn't care for and
certain things going on that took away from the realism that
you would normally expect when playing a basketball
simulation. Some of these things like the high steal and
block rate really good on my nerves the iffy graphics and
Vitale's commentary.
The fun factor on this is pretty high I always had a good
time while playing this game and have to say it is one of
most fun basketball sims I ever played. This game had a lot
of key factors that made it so much fun to play and so much
fun for those around you. Even if your not much a college
hoops fan yopu will find a lot of fun in this game and enjoy
while you are playing it. The replay value on the other hand
is kind of low once you make it to the dance it's pretty
boring playing this thing in one player and I doubt man out
there will play the game one players after that. With
friends then well you got a lot of fun here.
Overall it has a lot of realism and it's great with a bunch
of friends this game will be excited and fun to play for a
long time. The extreme game play make this one a winner and
all the teams that you have available to choose from really
make this game worth playing and also a lot of fun to play.
I really thought this game wasn't good to be all that good
but I was dead wrong this game is great. You can't really go
wrong with playing this and it is easily one of the best
games on the market. I really loved playing this game and I
highly recommend you to get it you can't go wrong.
