NCAA March Madness 06

"EA Sports It's in the Game.....Or is it?"

Starting with the beginning, the front end of the game while it is customizable, needs to be done every time you load the game. Monotonous? Yes. A Problem? Not so much.

The Game modes are decent, with your usual Season, Dynasty, and Exhibition Games. The added bonuses to the game are that you can choose to hone your skills in a Practice mode, or you can cut straight to the point, and play in the Tournament Mode, which allows you to either play in the EA Sports Maui Invitational (which ironically, is the only place Chaminade is available), or, if you'd like, you can jump straight into the 64 man tourney, and make yourself a National Champion in all of 3 hours at the most. The other modes include College Classics, which allows you to relive 10 of the greatest games in NCAA history. The other mode, is the March Madness Retro Mode, which allows you to play the 16 or 32 bit version of the game. It's fun for the first 30 seconds, but after that, it's a waste of time. The space could have been used to include other features, which could have improved the game dramatically.

As far as features go, you're presented with a minimal variety, which include historic rosters, a Create a Player option, and the Ability to Edit/ Change players names. There are a few problems with this. Suppose EA screwed up with the hair style your player has. Not a big problem, right? Just go in and change it. Wrong. In order to do this, you have to give the player a whole new face, and then give him hair. Another feature the game is lacking, is the option to create a school. Sure, you can create a player, or a bunch of players, but you can't put them together on the same team if you have more players than the team as roster spots.

As far as the music goes, it's great to be able to listen to instrumental music from the Grambling State Marching Band, but it gets old quick. The only song worth listening to is One Shining Moment, but yeah, that gets old quick too.

And, onto the most important part, the game play and graphics. Their not that great. Point blank, its the best way to put it. The graphics are nothing but lack luster, as they don't even come close to using 50% of the capabilities of the PS2, and as far as the game play physics go, they honestly feel pretty laggy, like you don't have much control over what's going on. And, as far as the AI goes, it seems to have a God-like playing ability. At points in time, they play like my high school basketball team, and at other times (95% of the game) they play like the '92 Dream Team.

Overall, the game is a poor product of EA. They've dropped the ball so to speak. They put more time into their other games, and pretty much let this one go to the rats, and then release a poor finish product. Maybe thats why it's only $40? And it's not worth it. So, as a gamer who does nothing but play EA games, and love them all, this is a major disappointment.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/05