A Sith Reviews: NCAA Basketball 10

Every year there is an event that captivates millions and changes the lives of hundreds of college men and women; the National Collegiate Athletic Association's yearly basketball tournament, known as March Madness. Unsurprisingly to coincide with this tradition there has been, for the last 15 years, a new NCAA basketball video game. EA's 2009 edition, NCAA Basketball '10, is the final edition in the series.

The majority of gameplay time goes into building a program making it a dynasty over a 30-year period. During this 30-year period, you choose whether to build from the ground up, or take a well-known program and take them to the next level. The building of your dynasty takes place in a few main places: recruiting, coaching, tournaments, and the actual match-ups. With each season starting with the off-season and the challenge of replacing your exiting seniors, or star player leaving for the NBA draft. The recruiting process is easy and intuitive, with a menu based system, which you select options to attempt to sway the targeted recruit the program. Some of the many ways to do this include sending the recruit an email or having him take a tour of the campus. With each successful choice done, the interest the recruit has in the program increases and will hopefully reach a point where they will accept a scholarship offer to play for you. While this system is easy it balances itself well, the higher caliber the recruit the more reputable or prestigious your program must be to garner any interest from the start. In addition the amount of points available, to spend on recruitment options are limited to create more strategy to the process. Though once you get past recruiting the off season is criminally shallow, while it does flush out how well done recruiting was, it lacks the depth that is needed in this detailed a dynasty simulator.

While recruiting players is a key to success on the court, knowing your play style as a coach is almost more important. During the game a tempo meter shows the current tempo, there are three tempos: up-tempo or quick shots with few set plays, balanced, which combines the quick style of up-tempo and the longer plays of the final tempo, which uses many set plays and is slower, the half court tempo. The importance of this system is that if you play to the tempo you as a coach set your team to before each game you gain a bonus in shooting accuracy and range. This bonus is invaluable when playing with a weaker team, such as one that you may start with.

Although the teams at the inception of your dynasty may be lack luster, they will not lose because of the controls. The game play on the court shares the lime light with the building behind the scenes of the dynasty. With anywhere from 20-40 games in a season there is plenty of basketball to go around, so the controls had better be adequate or the game would fall flat. Unsurprisingly, the game keeps true to college basketball of recent memory, with controls that are fluid and tight allowing for easy passing, shooting, and of course dunking. If there is anywhere the gameplay falters, it would be the broadcasting, while using the legendary Dick Vital and Brad Nessler for one team and the CBS star team of Gus Johnson and Bill Rafferty for the other, the overuse of random one-liners takes a lot away from the game.

What, one might ask, is the point of enduring this grating broadcasting, and playing the regular season? Well two words synonymous with college basketball can sum that up: March Madness. After the regular season and the conference tournaments, depending on how well you did during the season you may go dancing in the hunt for the NCAA title. With a selection show to give, the full experience of seeing which teams were snubbed and what teams earned the coveted one seeds. Leading to six games over the course of three weeks in which competition is tougher and one loss means devastation to the hopes and dreams of your team. This, just means more, with each win you inch closer to the ultimate goal of the year, and with just a few wins both you and your team takes your rightful place in basketball lore.

While the dynasty mode's NCAA tournament is intense and well worth the work of the regular season, if instant gratification is more your style this game conforms to your wills as well. With the tournament mode, you can play any of the many preseason tournaments, including the prestigious NIT preseason tip-off and the Maui invitational tournament. Also the NCAA tournament, selection, and seeding are at your control. With the ability to select what teams get in and what their seed is the match-ups you always wanted are available, which includes historic teams that can be put in the tournament such as the “greatest upset team in history” Western Texas, which upset powerhouse Kentucky. However, the only problem is that all the tournaments are the same thing repeatedly in a different arena with different teams.

While you can match up rivals in the NCAA tournament for fun, there is also a rival challenge mode for those who want more of a challenge in their rival games. This gameplay mode allows you to hit the R3 button and a list of people whose profile has their favorite team as the rival to your favorite. Allowing for quick match-ups against the people, you most want to beat. While these games can go on for a little too long, and your win does not count if the opponent disconnects mid-game can cause some rage, but that is an expectation with any online sports game.

While the game is fun, its biggest flaw is the lack of replay value, or even incentive to playthrough a dynasty. Even though the gameplay is polished, you will not find this game sitting in your Xbox 360 for too long. As a title that will give some entertainment and most certainly scratch that itch for college basketball I recommend NCAA Basketball '10 as a buy, but if you just want a weekend of who would beat who and not want to play a 30 year dynasty it is still good for a rent.