NCAA March Madness 2004

Despite a few bumps in the road some years, EA Sports has delivered some excellent college basketball games to compliment their usually solid NBA Live franchise. Starting with the immortal Coach K College Basketball, and moving on to the March Madness franchise, their college hoops games have managed to maintain the essence and excitement of the sport, year in and year out. While the first pair of PlayStation 2 editions of the MM series were a bit lacking (due in part to the NBA Live games lacking), EA's latest edition is truly the best one they've yet released, capturing many of the assets that makes its college football franchise so beloved, and combining it with the refined and polished gameplay that the freestyle control engine brings. It seems that Sega's involvement with college basketball has woken EA up, because they've truly stepped up to deliver a rewarding and exciting game of college basketball.

March Madness '04 features all the usual trimmings, from custom tournaments, single seasons, and exhibition contests, along with online play via EA Sports Nation (for both dial-up and broadband users, and supports the USB headset for broadband gamers), and a deep and refined Dynasty system. The Dynasty system borrows much from NCAA Football 2004 - you can recruit new freshmen, raise your team's prestige rank, resign and find another job, etc. for a total of 30 seasons if you so choose. What's brand new is the inclusion of pretty much all 300+ NCAA Division-1 teams, a first for the series, even if 989 Sports was the first to do it some 5 years ago on the original PlayStation. Some are left out due to obvious contract squabbles (like Sega's game, which had some teams substituted with different names), but if you can imagine a college team, they're probably in the game.

New to the Dynasty are the training modes that can raise the skills of your players - useful if you're taking a poor team up the ranks. As you play and track things via Campus Challenge, you earn points that you can allocate towards hiring a better batch of assistant coaches, and run drills that improve the performance of certain players, be it for 1 game, 5 games, or even a whole season. Naturally, getting the best training and/or hires requires lots of playtime and self-improvement, but if you manage to make the NCAA Tournament, using that training well might be the difference between making the Final Four or going out in the first round of 65.

The Dynasty includes full conference tournaments, an entire 65 team field (with one play-in game to make it 65, remember), and even the pre-season invite-only Maui Invitational, which is conveniently sponsored in real-life by EA Sports. Hmm. Truly, the Dynasty mode in MM '04 feels just like a real college hoops season, from beginning to end

Like NCAA Football 2004, March Madness uses a sports magazine license to display awards, statistics, standings (both conference and Top 25/RPI polls, as well as On The Bubble teams later in the season), and current happenings in your season. This time though, it's not Sports Illustrated, but rather The Sporting News who delivers all this information to you as the season progresses. Like it's football counterpart, this asset brings a touch of realism to the table as well as present a neat way to keep track of other events during the course of a season, for stat-heads and standing-checkers alike.

March Madness also supports the EA Sports BIO, but it seems like a tacked on afterthought this time around - with no Madden Cards or pennants to unlock (as Campus Challenge is used for the training events this time around), it's pretty much useless other than to use time played with MM to unlock things in Madden, NBA Live, or whatever, or to just keep track of your achievements in March Madness.

It's on the court where MM '04 shines, however. While it's closest competition in ESPN College Hoops is stiff and plodding in pace, March Madness is speedy, and more resembling of the game of college basketball, rather than simply being an NBA game in college uniforms. Better yet, March Madness feels like a real basketball game, from the opening tip to the final buzzer. As in NBA Live, a new 10-man motion capture process was used, creating unprecedented realism in how the game works. In many instances, the game is not simply about driving into the lane and dunking or laying it in - instead, you have to learn how to work the ball around to find the open man - without making a mistake and passing it in front of a defender, who WILL steal the basketball from you. This leads to some great contests with both computer and human opponents, as it's less a dunk contest and more of a basketball game.

And on defense, it's your job to stick with your man, and not take the easy double team, as your opponent will exploit it and hurt you. The AI is a bit suspect at working the ball around, but they can kill you if you don't cover your opponent well enough, unless one of your centers is around to make them change their shot around or block it and take posession.

Actually, the entire shot process has been revamped in March Madness for even more added realism. You're able to change your own shot in mid air, either by force with an opponent hand in your face, or simply to get a better look while hanging around waiting for gravity to bring you back to the hardwood. It's especially useful in tight situations, as changing your shot can be the difference between a block and a basket. Also new is the dual buttons for shooting - the circle button is used for a regular jump shot, while the square button is for layups and dunks, or floaters if you're not close to the hoop. It takes a few seconds to get used to this, but it becomes second nature right away, and is a very intuitive method of shooting the ball.

Of course, EA's trademark Freestyle controls return, better than ever. While the process is the same as in Live 2003 and March Madness 2003, it's much more refined and not nearly as deadly - but more rewarding when it is. You can't just keep swatting at the ball and force a steal every time down the court, nor can you breeze by a defender constantly for an easy lay-in. Instead, the Freestyle is better used simply to annoy and frustrate an offensive player, and be used to exploit weaknesses in your defender on offense. As such it's incredibly satisfying to pull off a killer crossover and watch the ankles of the defender break as you sneak by into the lane for an easy 2, as it doesn't happen all the time.

The only downside is the typically bizarre EA AI system - again, the bad teams put up more of a fight than the good teams. How can I beat UConn by 35 and beat Rutgers by 8? This kind of thing has been intact in EA games for years, and it's so strange to have it happen here. Anything can happen in college basketball, yes, but it seems to happen enough across the board that it's not specific to hoops. At least the insane comeback AI isn't around for this game. Otherwise, March Madness is an exciting game of college basketball that has enough modes of play and gameplay strengths that you forget all about being upset by Chaminade in the Maui Invitational.

To go along with the great gameplay is the sharp visuals. The game runs fast and fluidly with no problems with framerate (something that has hampered many past March Madness games for some reason, back in the PlayStation days), and the character models are well defined, and all the real courts are rendered and full of screaming fans (or not full of screaming fans, if the team sucks). What makes March Madness shine in this department is the great animations, though. From all the activity in the lane when adjusting and changing your shots, to the mo-cap of aggressive defenders trying to swipe the ball from you, it's all so well done that it looks like real players out there fighting. When you see the double-team animation with one guy hounding and the other trying to swat the ball, you'll understand what I mean. The game simply looks great.

Adding to that is great audio presentation that's trademark EA. From roaring and chanting crowds, making home games adrenaline pumping and road games nasty events, to the band pumping out music, the game rivals the experience of watching a college game in person. The menu music, full of fight songs, is a bit poor and tinny, but on the court, it rocks. Adding to that is the commentary of Brad Nessler and Dick Vitale, which is mostly good, but not without flaws. Dickie V has a tendency to flip flop, making 2 statements right after another that contradict each other, and of course, he screams a lot, and you know what that means. Nessler, as always, is solid and you actually hear more of him this time around, unlike NCAA Football where he has 2 other guys competing for time to speak.