"While Josh Childress is driving and popping the trey"

Another year, another basketball game. This year; just about every aspect has been upgraded. They include basically all the teams in Division One men's basketball except for a few schools that they didn't get the rights from. Since this doesn't follow under any of the other categories. I want to explain what bugged me the most. The face models for this game are limited and after you go through rosters you'll see two guys on the same team with the same face. And of course some of the players have fros when they don't in real life and if you want to change it then the entire face gets reset and it's impossible to make that one again.

With that being said, I'll move on to the aspects that make this game one for the sport game record books. Oh, and I need to rant about the fact that Josh Childress is not in the game even though in that T.O commercial about the ESPN 2K5 lineup, they show him playing but he is not even on a classic Stanford team.

Gameplay
When you first start the game up you have the choice of using the numbers or generating random names. It's best to choose numbers and then go and find your favorite players and name them. You can start a quick game or a gym game to practice the game, unlike it's NBA counterpart, you can't do a fantasy draft and pick your favorite college stars onto one team. If you go to roster management then you can create up to ten players or two teams. (Which really needs to be changed) and this is where you can change the players names from numbers to their name. I like this a lot and the NBA version doesn't have this for created players where if the name is in their database then they will say it.

Eventually you'll move on to Legacy where you can do an Open Legacy which let's you choose any school, but you don't get to change. The other is a Career Legacy which let's you pick from twenty of the worst schools in the game and you build your coaching status up to the top schools. This is one of the top management legacies I have seen in a game yet, but there are some minor glitches and when your players are drafted, they go buy rating and not statistical wise. So if your player from Navy was 58 overall and you put up 25 ppg and 15 apg, while winning the Naismith Award, you still wouldn't be drafted. Like a lot of other sport games, you can points from doing in-game tasks which can be used to buy classic teams, stadiums, and alternate jerseys.

Graphics
The ESPN franchise is known for their great graphics compared to the choppy ones of EA Sports, (excluding Madden) but they could still be better. They really need to adopt a face morphing feature which you can shape any player there is and make him look like he does in real life. On the court, you rarely notice. Unless of course they show a close up on the guy while he's celebrating or shooting free throws. The stadiums on the other hand or nice to look at, but the crowd really needs to be re-done to look real. But since their main focus was to make the playing area look good, they succeeded and the court looks great.

Sound/Commentary
The sound is top notch, there is more than one sound for a swish, dunk, swap, whistle, and shoes hitting the floor which really keeps the game fresh. The beats are the same ones they play on ESPN during college talk which is nice to know they didn't make up some beats for the game (I.E NBA 2K5). Commentary in this game is pretty good, but there is a lot of room for improvement. The voices are good, but they run out of sayings after about thirty times playing a game. Probably the most annoying thing is when they trail on about something that just happened but isn't anymore. An examples would be the opposing team is down by five and they say, “#5 is taking it up court and could have a great opportunity to score seeing they're down by five.” But realistically, I steal it when he says, “up court” and score bringing my lead to seven but he still says five.

Replay Value/Multi-Player
This is a very great game that you will play a lot if you are into the college hoops. The legacy mode is what really keeps the fans into the game and you actually do around thirty games a season, which makes it easy and gives you realistic stats. If you have some friends over, the multi-player is also great and you can have some pretty crazy battles. Just be warned that you should really have at least two Dualshock 2 controllers and don't use a Dualshock 1. The reason being is that the R1 doesn't work for some reason on the Dualshock 1.

Final Evaluation
If you are a big college hoops fan, you should defiantly buy this game. It's only $20 and you will be playing this for awhile. If you are a little skeptical, either rent it or you can wait every year when a new game is made.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/05, Updated 07/25/06