NCAA March Madness 2005

"I like it. I like it a lot."

Maybe I'm biased due to my love of college basketball, but I really enjoy playing this game. The 31 conferences, the Top 25, the Tournament Watch...I love it! But even as just a basketball video game, I think this one does pretty well.

Graphics: 9/10

The graphics are good. Once in awhile, it looks like a guy went out of bounds or a shot is given three points instead of two when his foot was CLEARLY on the line, but I actually like the way this works out because referees make bad calls once in awhile in real games. I've looked at replays and said, "Give me a break!" a few times playing this game, and that's just the way real basketball is. And fundamentally, the graphics are fine.

Sound: 6/10

The sound effects are fine. Pretty hard to mess that up in a basketball game. The announcing isn't very good, simply because (as in just about every sports game), the comments of the announcers are quite limited. You end up hearing the same "unique" thing (quoting of a song lyric, mentioning of a player in the past) every third time you play. And the menu music is great, with marching band versions of popular and very catchy songs, but the actual number of songs is unfortunately small. The sound...gets the job done.

Game Play: 9/10

It's great! There's several different things you can do, including an exhibition game, a Season, a Dynasty Mode, and some other unusual features. One is Pontiac College Classics, where you can relive some of the most memorable moments of college basketball. Another is Rivalry Game, where a list of rivalries is given and you can jump right into one of the games. And the most amusing is definitely Mascot Game, where you pick a team and five of that team's mascot takes the floor, instead of the real players! The thing is, all these modes are useless unless the actual playing of the game is fun.

And it is! The easier difficulties allow you to spin through the defense pretty easily, but the harder settings force you to pass the ball and run offensive plays. Post play is very well done, very well balanced. On defense, you can choose from a few half-court zones as well as zone full-court presses, or just go HC/FC Man-to-Man. Staying aware will get you a few additional steals per game, as well as a few retrieval of loose balls leading to fast breaks. Lazy, cross-court passes will almost always get intercepted, forcing you to be smart with the ball.

And Dynasty Mode is a blast! Pick your favorite team and try to get them a spot (maybe even a 1 seed) in the NCAA Tournament, not to mention your conference tournament and (if you get invited) the Maui Invitational. Recruit players by sending them packages, watching their games, inviting them to campus, scouting their skills and discipline, and eventually offering them that scholarship and waiting nervously to see if they decide your school is the right one for them. Punish players when they commit violations or face the wrath of the NCAA, which could get your televised games cancelled, or worse, you could be kicked out of the Tournament! Dynasty Mode is very immersive and does an excellent job of capturing the excitement of March Madness, as well as the four other months of basketball, with some good while not-too-complex offseason tasks.

I do have a few minor beefs with the game, but they're nothing much. The game does get a little easy as you play more and more, but you can up the difficulty to All-American and go to Gameplay Settings to help increase the challenge as well. Defense (particularly with foul calls and stuff) can get frustrating, but that also (perhaps coincidentally, but nevertheless) captures real college basketball pretty well. Refs will call ticky-tack fouls and let hard hits on dunks/lay-ups go sometimes. The question is: Are you good enough to win despite that? Which is very much a real issue of basketball. And then there's the obvious. "How did I not steal that? The pass went right through me!" It's simply too hard to recreate the mechanics of passing the ball accurately, in terms of bounce passes, throwing it over and under the defense, etc. I think this game does a good job of balancing the scale between not letting every pass be stolen, while still forcing you to make smart passes (a pass right through a waiting defender on an inbounds play will get stolen more often then not).

So in the end, I really think this game does what so many other basketball games fail to do. Basketball is a very difficult sport to accurately bring to video games, and I think this game does as good as job as any. The gameplay is fantastic.

Final Word: Oh, buy this one! If you like college basketball, this is a MUST-HAVE. If you're not much of a fan, I suppose you could rent this one and play through a season or two. But I'm guy who's played a fair amount of basketball games, and I say without a doubt that this is the best I've seen. Great stuff!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/25/08

Game Release: NCAA March Madness 2005 (US, 11/17/04)