NCAA Basketball 09 March Madness Edition (XBLA) Review
Posted by Adam Larck on 03.26.2009
With March Madness in full swing, can EA deliver a slam dunk for the Live Arcade, or does it just throw up a brick? Find out inside!
Title: NCAA Basketball 09 March Madness Edition
Publisher: Xbox LIVE Arcade
Developer: Namco Bandai
Genre: Sports
Players: 1-4
Rated: E for Everyone
Let me start off by saying that when it comes to watching sports, college basketball is in my top three. Even before I was in college, I would try to catch as many games as I could. That being said, I didn’t know what to expect when I got NCAA 09 Basketball March Madness Edition. Seeing that it was a 1.54 GB download for an arcade game already had me intrigued, because it shattered the XBLA download cap (which Portal also shattered last year). But, the quality of the game isn’t based on how big it is, it’s based on how it plays.
How it plays is exactly like NCAA Basketball 09. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, considering the game is actually the 09 game, just stripped down for March Madness fans. So for owners of the full 09 game, don’t expect anything new or exciting here.
Actually, when I started it up and looked at the brackets, I was immediately confused. UCLA as a No. 1 seed? Illinois not even in the tournament (although I still debate if they ever showed up for the actual tournament anyways)? What happened to the real bracket? It took me about five minutes before I actually realized you have to download another add-on, a Bracket Pack, to even get the official pack to play with. So there’s another 108 MB gone of hard drive space.
But by taking up all of this space, the game should run smooth and look great, right? Well, yes and no. The game does look good, it’s true, but I noticed some graphics freezes here and there when I was playing. I also noticed quite a few graphic glitches and hiccups when players were standing still out of bounds or shooting free throws. It always looked weird when the two members of the opposite team are seen standing by the guy shooting free throws and doing the same choppy animation over and over.
That takes me to another big thing that annoyed me, generic motions used. Instead of giving each team their own unique feel or identity, a lot of animations were just reused and a different jersey skin was put on it. This, to me, shows that they were trying to rush this out the door to coincide with March Madness instead of putting good time in to polish MME.
Enough about the graphics, though, let’s talk about the gameplay. If you’ve played a NCAA basketball game in the past few years, you should know what to expect. The shooting seems very simple, as you don’t need to really focus on the time you let go of the button to shoot. As long as you press and hold down the shoot button for a second, he’ll shoot it regardless of how long it was held.
The only time that timing with shots is key is when it comes to free throw shooting. Even that is just holding the B button down until the meter gets to the green area and let go. Depending on how good the person is at shooting free throws the green bar gets bigger or smaller.
Another thing I noticed in the game is that the computer does have the realism of many college teams when it comes down to the wire. Within the last minute of a close game, the computer would always foul to stop the clock and send me to the line. I liked the touch of realism, but it seems I could never try to pass when they did this. My character would just stand and take it. Oh well, at least shooting the free throws were easy enough.
The only mode available in the game is the Bracket mode. You can edit and make your own bracket to make your ideal bracket, which is nice, but right now, why would you want to play anything except the actual bracket.
After choosing your team and starting the bracket up, you can change the amount of time per half and jersey colors, it shows you the arena you’re playing at and gives you a bit of background information on it, then you choose three areas you want your team to focus on. I would choose the areas, but never did think they changed the game or how my players were playing. Dick Vitale would talk about the areas during warm-ups and I could see how close I was following the areas at halftime, but that was about the only time I ever heard about them.
When you get to the final game and win, it seems like a letdown. You’re team wins the National Championship, but all that happens is that the losing team looks dejected, confetti falls, your team gets the title, and you hear “One Shining Moment” being played. But that’s it. There was nothing to really commemorate the win or make it memorable for you. Heck, you don’t even get an achievement for winning the title. All that happens is you get put back at the screen where you can control a guy shooting a basketball, and you can go back in to view the bracket. You can’t even tell who won the title game unless you click on the final game. EA could have at least put the winner in big letters beside the final game.
The music in the game before playing isn’t bad. There’s only 12 tracks, all performed by the Mei Marching Band. What disappointed me here was that none of the team’s school songs are available to listen to. Small touches like that can make a game good and really memorable.
The final point I want to touch on, the biggest negative of the game, is the lack of an online mode. Sure, you can play with four people on the same system, but where’s the fun in that? Allowing 64 people online to control individual teams and see who the best player is in a bracket play, now that’s what gives a game like this replayablity and marketability. The exclusion of any multiplayer mode, even a one-on-one mode, hurts this game a lot.
As a side note, you can simulate games like in the full version of the game, so I decided to simulate the bracket to see how close it could be to the real deal. So far, it’s missed 16 games in the first two rounds, and actually missed six of the Sweet 16 teams (I’m happy to report my bracket has only missed two). And, in case you are wondering, UConn, West Virginia, North Carolina and Pittsburgh make up its Final Four, with UConn winning it all.
The 411:
Overall, except for hardcore March Madness fans who don’t own 09, this game can easily be overlooked thanks to its $15 price tag. While I applaud EA for trying to be timely with March Madness happening right now, they just stripped too much out of the original game to make it worth purchasing the arcade game over the full version. The graphic glitches and lack of an online mode hurts this slimmed down version. While the game is fun to play for sports fans, $15 is just too steep.
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