User Reviews (1 - 5 of 5)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Unforgivable Technical Glitches Spoil what should have been a Good Game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

2K's "NCAA College Hoops" series is one of two annual offerings for college basketball, the other being EA's "March Madness". The decision of one or the other usually comes down to the player's tastes - people generally prefer the realistic, sim-style play of "College Hoops" or the run-and-gun arcade experience of "March Madness". Unfortunately, 2K threw up an airball with this year's edition, putting out the most glitch-ridden console title that I've ever seen in my decades of gaming. How a solid company like 2K could do this is something that we'll never know, although my guess is that there was so much time and emphasis put into their debut titles for the XBox 360 that some other products weren't tested enough before release. Whatever the backstory is, the results for "NCAA College Hoops 2K6" are disappointing at best and outright maddening at worst.

PLAY MODES / INTEREST FACTOR
The game offers a variety of play modes that veteran gamers have come to expect such as a quick single game, a season as one particular team, and a random tournament bracket. One new addition this year is the dynasty mode from the coach's perspective. This is one of the highlights of the game since it will keep you coming back to play for a long time to come. You create a rookie head coach and choose a small program for him to begin his career. You'll have to play several seasons there while you get the hang of the in-game controls and the off-season activities such as recruiting. If you begin to rack up some consistent success with your team, you will get job offers from bigger and better schools in the offseason. If you don't, you'll eventually get pink-slipped. It's a lot of fun trying to turn around a program from meager beginnings and eventually start bringing in decent recruits and making some noise in March. But it's the ability to change schools that makes this dynasty mode unique and rewarding. I actually hated to leave behind my first job because I wouldn't be able to see how my recruits' college careers progressed. But once you get into a mid-major program where you can grab the attention of some Mr. Basketball and All-American recruits, you'll be hooked. This dynasty mode is deep and well-balanced between the games of the season and the recruiting that takes place year-round.

Recruiting is pretty detailed, but some apsects do eventually become monotonous. You and your assistant coaches head out each week to scout and meet with as many prospective students as possible until your free time runs out. Different coaches on your staff have different strengths, i.e. one assistant may break tape down more accurately than anyone but is so sloppy in-person that he could single-handedly turn a recruit on to your crosstown rival if he met him face-to-face. So, you've got to pair the right resources up with the tasks to be done. Also, you can begin fostering a relationship with a worthy recruit all the way back to his freshman year in high school, so even a small school as a chance with a local phenom if you put in enough time with him over the years. Some of the more routine tasks should have been left out or else made more automatic. For example, even if you don't visit a particular recruit for a week, you still need to email him or else he'll start to lose interest in your program. Instructing different coaches to email different players each week eventually turns into just repetitive (but necessary) button-pressing. There is an option for "CPU Recruiting Help" that is supposed to take care of this, but it doesn't seem to do much, so I couldn't trust it.

You can also export your graduating seniors and early-entry underclassmen to a draft file to use in the "NBA 2K6" game, which is a great tie-in once you've become so invested in your prize players.

GAMEPLAY
Unfortunately, the real problems for this game arise when the tipoff goes up. You'll almost immediately notice how gameplay is constantly interrupted by momentary freezes in the action. This is especially true if you use an up-tempo transition (i.e. fun) style of play. It's very disruptive to your attempts to pull off the cool moves that the game controls offer when these stutters occur. I've missed countless alley-oops or else launched an accidental half-court shot when I wanted to perform an icon pass because of these problems. Simply put, the game doesn't run reliably on the PS2 (and I tested the game out on several PS2 units with similar results). Eventually you get used to these instances, but at this point in the series, this lack of quality control is unacceptable from a big-name game developer like 2K.

There are also stranger glitches as well. My favorite occurred when my team was playing in a preseason tournament and hit the last-second shot to tie at the buzzer. But instead of playing overtime, the game just sent me back to the calendar menu and declared me the winner. This was weird, but I could live with it until I noticed that my next tournament matchup hadn't appeared on my calendar. So when I checked the tournament bracket, I saw the tie score but this time I was listed as the loser. Basically, the game was stuck in a perpetual loop, forever unsure if I should proceed in that tournament or not. I'd unfortunately already saved after the game and so I had to lose that entire dynasty because of this glitch. There are also instances of the game completely freezing up when navigating menus or examining conference standings or player stats (you'll know when the background music goes haywire), so you quickly learn to save your games often. Imagine how frustrating it could be when you squeak out a buzzer-beater against a huge favorite but then can't save the game in time before one of these problems wipes you out.

The in-game controls are full-featured and intuitive, so it won't take you long to begin performing crisp icon passes, alley-oop dunks and low post drop-steps that will have your opponent's heads spinning. This year's game also introduces the "shot stick", which uses the right analog to perform lots of specific shot types. Basically, you push up for dunks or down for jumpers, but you can also mix in moves to the left or the right to spice up the shot. It's tricky to get the hang of, but is rewarding for advanced players once your little guards start handing out reverse layups in traffic and your big forwards slam home the windmills. 2K touts a redesigned free-throw system, but it's basically just an extension of the shot stick and actually is more touchy (and frustrating) than it should be.

The CPU's artificial intelligence is pretty good. The nicest development is that opposing teams will actually use their strengths against you, i.e. if they have a dominant big man, they'll feed him early and often on you, trying to get your frontcourt in foul trouble. If they have good outside shooting, they'll run lots of ball movement looking to catch you double-teaming the wrong man and then stick the open jumper. Playing a superior team is therefore a very enjoyable challenge compared to a lot of other sports games where the CPU just relies on simple, predictable tactics. However, this game does get a little lazy when you're playing as an underdog in the postseason. At that point, the game seems to take the disappointing route that so many others have where it doesn't beat you with superior play but instead makes you beat yourself when suddenly you lose your ability to do anything right at all. You end up with a a very frustrating feeling of having been cheated when your team that had connected on 80% of their free throws suddenly struggles to make half of that when it really matters. Turnovers, blown dunks - the CPU trumps up lots of irritating ways to keep you from winning the deeper you go into the postseason.

GRAPHICS / SOUND / PRESENTATION

Graphically, College Hoops 2K6 is very solid. The player models look good, although like all games of this generation, the heads tend to look more than just a little zombie-like. Also, it won't be long until you start finding "twins" all over the league and even on your team because the choice of available heads is rather limited. The arenas are detailed and well-rendered. There is also a lot going on on the sidelines and in the stands: cheerleaders, mascots, coaches and even a few rows of fully-rendered fans. It's nice dressing, but if it could have been cut out in order to preserve the gameplay, then it's not that worthwhile.

The sound is another big disappointment. The crowd noise is an annoyingly short loop and it won't be long until you pick out specific cheer sounds after each basket. Very few actual college fight songs are included, so you usually just hear the band playing something generic. But the real downer is the commentating of Verne Lundquist, Billy Packer and Bonnie Bernstein. There aren't enough clips, so it gets very repetitive very soon, especially the color commentating of Packer (he'll exclaim "they're playing a zone with man-to-man principles!" about a dozen times each game). It also doesn't do a good enough job putting the clips in appropriate places. For example, I had a player get injured early in the second half of a game. Bonnie came back with under a minute left to go in a blowout victory to say that "the trainers say that it's just a sprain, so we'll probably see him back on the floor later in the game if they need him." Uh, thanks a lot for that report, B-Squared. But at least the in-game trio was spared from being rendered in-person for the post game highlight show, where extremely robotic-looking versions of Greg Gumbel and Clark Kellogg spout nonsense after a long load time.

College Hoops 2K6 also misses the mark in its presentation by failing to capture the feel of the college game in the details. For instance, they tried to knock off EA's cross-marketing idea of putting popular music over the titles and timeouts, but it's a beyond annoying blend of techno dance and modern rock. You can set up a profile that omits these tracks in favor of the college fight songs, but even then it never shuffles them. So, you'll always hear the first song in your playlist and likely never anything else. The menus also look needlessly futuristic (like a cheesy newscast) where they should have portrayed more of a college look as EA's "NCAA Football 06" did so well.

CONCLUSION
Overall, this is a game that you can get into if you love a good dynasty mode and you have enough patience to overlook the gameplay faults. But there will still be too many frustrating moments where you'll shake your head and wonder why this game didn't turn out as good as it should have.

Pros:
* The emphasis on the coach in the dynasty mode sets up the potential for lots of long-term interest
* Recruiting activities keep the dynasty mode fun and challenging even beyond the games
* When playing the CPU, its intelligence is well-crafted, making it a good one-player game
* The dynasty mode fits with NBA 2K via exported draft classes

Cons:
* The runtime glitches ruin the flow of the game and make for some frustrating control errors
* The commentary is dull and repetitive
* The complexity of the control scheme may be too much for some
* Games sometimes feel like they have scripted outcomes, i.e. when it wants you to lose, your team can't do even the simple things right
* There isn't enough of a college "feel" to distinguish it from NBA 2K6.

game is terrible dont get it (honest Review)

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 19
Date: December 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

this game is terribleperiod! dnt get it
There is so much glitches. its probally the worst gaming experience evr if your into bball games get nba 2k6!!best game ever. the dynasty mode is so screwed up..........i wouldnt even rent it

Good game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The only complaint I have about this game is the players. I usually play with the same team, and every time I play, the players are totally different. OK, so I can be fine with that. The thing is, they have the same jersey numbers as the players in the previous game, and the players look just the same every time. 2K Sports should've worked more on that.

Otherwise, this game is a lot of fun. The graphics are cool, good sound, nice transition to instant replays, and the game is very addictive.

The best of College Basketball keeps on goin'!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: December 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've been a big follower of College Hoops since I was a NCAA March Madness player. I made a great switch and started to play this game. I've also loved the 2K5 version, but the gameplay is different in this year's version.

Not only you get the great and smooth gameplay, you'll get all the modes that made 2K5 popular, even with the historic teams from 2K5 making a return with a few 2004 teams.

The announcing of Mike Patrick and one-time Duke player Jay Bilas is gone, but to be replaced by a bunch of announcers. The announcers are Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery (If you remember them from the older NCAA March Madness games for the PSOne, you'll know what they sound like.), new sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein (Ex-ESPN sportscaster turned CBS NCAA Hostess), and current CBS Sportscasters Clark Kellog and Greg Gumbel. I bet this team will rival the ESPN NFL 2K5 news team anytime.

The controls are tricky, but once you get a hang of it, you can be a powerhouse. I recommend setting the difficulty on Walk-On for a very easy game. One of the things that really changed is the Free Throw system. This time, when you see the Hold the R3 stick prompt, you press and hold the R3 stick, and pull it down until the ball parts from the player's hands, and let it go.

You can still find full team rosters at various websites that have roster saves, and you can also edit the historic rosters like you did in last year's version.

So don't listen to what that last poster said, and pick this game up. It sure beats NCAA March Madness '06.

THE BEST COLLEGE GAME EVER.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The dynasty mode on this totally beats any other games'. I would have paid 50$ for this awesome game.

Review Page: 1 

Actions