March 17, 2006 @ 4:18 pm

NCAA 06 March Madness

Quibian Salazar-Moreno

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Storyline: Ever since EA Sports introduced its NCAA basketball franchise, it's always stood in the shadow of its bigger brother, NBA Live. But just like with the NCAA Football franchise, NCAA basketball has been creeping on a come up to take over its pro-basketball counterpart. As with most of their NCAA titles, EA always captures the spirit and energy of college athletics. The only thing that the NCAA games have had running against it was the superstar athlete push. Since college athletes are amateur athletes, their names and images are not allowed to be used in the game, which is why typically, the cover boys of the games are already in the pro leagues. Also the gameplay has struggled a bit in past years, but who are we to complain when this is really only one of two decent college hoops game on the market? Audio/Visual: It's pretty much well-known that the graphics of the game seems kind of old. It's basically looked the same for the past 3 years with small improvements. The most notable improvement is the animation. While the players are seemingly faceless and emotionless, the movement on the court looks good and matches the intensity of a college basketball game. Some of the cooler animations is when a player is fouled, he gets in the face of the player who fouled him as if punches are about to be thrown. Audio is pretty good with Dick Vitale making the call. It's cool to hear Vitale call games that he would never call in real life, like Sacred Heart University versus University of St. Francis. The soundtrack, which consists of college bands playing their schools music just adds to the experience, plus the intensity of the crowd livens the whole thing, even though they look like paper dolls. left Controls: Most of the changes made for March Madness 06 is the controls. EA introduces the Lockdown Stick, with the down movement of the right analog stick, a defensive player can “lockdown” an opposing a player with the ball and force a turnover, bad shot, or an easy double-team. Using the triggers you can also draw a charge or attempt a steal. It definitely makes the game much more competitive. Also on defense you can call defensive plays using the D-Pad by playing man-to-man or a zone defense. On offense they added a dribble handoff move where you can run past a teammate and hand off the ball by pressing and holding down A. Hotness: Arena pulse!!! When playing a home game and your squad is playing decent, you can get the crowd hyped by making big plays and making the Arena Pulse meter grow. Once it gets to the max, the fans are shaking the whole arena making it difficult for any visiting team to put things together. Wackness: Any hardcore EA Sports fan will tell you the best thing about their games is the Dynasty Mode; where you can take control of a franchise for 10 years or more taking it from the bottom to a National Championship. Unfortunately, March Madness Dynasty Mode has been stagnant for the last few years, for this new installment, there is no improvement at all. It's the same thing. For casual gamers though, it doesn't really matter. And of course, they really need to improve the graphics and player models… like yesterday.

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