supersaiyan23's Full Review: NCAA March Madness 2002 for PlayStation 2
A few years ago I bought NCAA March Madness 2000 for my playstation 1. It was one of the best college basketball games I had played. I was at the mall the other day and seeing as how it's March Madness right now, I was looking for a college basketball game for the PS2. March Madness 2002 was on sale for $6.99 so I figured I couldn't go wrong.
Overview
Well there isn't much to explain here. March Madness is exactly that, take your favorite NCAA Men's Basketball team into the NCAA tournament and try to take them to the promised land of the National Championship.
Just a warning, there is no actual NCAA season mode in this game. This was a real let down for me, because March Madness 2000 had a season mode and it is 2 years older than this game. I was pondering why EA sports decided to regress rather than progress. The game gives you exactly what the title says, March Madness, nothing more, nothing less.
There are only two game modes, Play Now and Tournament, where you can set up your own NCAA tournament with random teams that you select, or you can jump right in and play as one of the teams in the 02' NCAA tournament. The difficulty settings can be changed if you are blowing your opponent out too much, but there are some unfair tendencies in the game. I noticed that even on the freshmen level, it is nearly impossible to block a shot and you will get out rebounded by at least 10-15 boards a game. When you raise the difficulty level it seems like every shot you take with out a pump fake is getting sent back in your general direction and somehow the computer is able to get offensive rebounds at will. This kind of eliminates any of the realistic aspect of the game.
The only other thing you can do with this game are edit the rosters and creating your own college. The roster feature is nice because you can actually go on it and edit the players of your favorite team, even give them names since most College Basketball games don't feature players names, I really enjoyed this feature. When you create your own school you of course get to name your college, pick its location, the fight song, etc. You can swap players from other teams to your school or just create your own all star squad. EA Sports has always been known for it's create-a-team/player features and in this case, March Madness delivers.
Gameplay
Gameplay is rather simple. You use the directional pad to move your player around the court. The various buttons are used for turbo, shot, steal, swap player, pass, etc. This can be a little confusing, I could not find any way to change the default controls and for some reason the game sets up one button for shot on offense and another for jumping on defense. This took a few games to get used to.
The graphics in this game are nothing spectacular. There are some pretty interesting player celebrations and pre-game locker room pump up sessions, but nothing special. The respective basketball courts appear fairly detailed for each team, but the crowd is barely noticeable during the games. Overall I give the graphics a 7/10 and that is being a little generous.
The menu and in-game music is up beat and gives a real college basketball atmosphere to the game. The school fight songs sound realistic and are 100% accurate as far as I can tell. Sound effects are also fairly authentic and you'll recognize the DEFENSE and other chants from the crowd throughout the game.
Overall
Overall I was really let down by this game. One of the main reasons, as mentioned before, was the fact that MM2000 had a season mode and this newer game does not. Thankfully I only paid seven bucks for this game or I would have really been upset. Don't get me wrong, March Madness 2002 is a decent college basketball game, but it is only going to keep your attention span for about 4 or 5 games or until you win the tournament. It took me a little under an hour to beat the game and now it has been sitting there ever since. I doubt I will play it that much in the future.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this opinion and as always I welcome any comments or suggestions. If you are looking for a decent college basketball game to kill a half hour with and never play again then March Madness 2002 is the perfect game for you. Otherwise try to find a more exciting title like NCAA 2004. Thanks again for reading! Adios!
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