NCAA Final Four 2004

I cannot believe that Football season is already half over but that means that Basketball season is starting to get in full swing once again. Each year developers try to create the best pro and college sports games to coincide with the start of a new season. To be blunt, 989 Sports has lost its edge that it had when the original Playstation was released. They created some of the best sports games back then, and ever since the release of the Playstation 2 they have been trying to catch up with the rest of the pack. Does NCAA Final Four 2004 recapture the glory they once had, or is it another sub par game? Read on to find out.

NCAA Final Four 2004 has plenty of different modes to offer gamers to get their college basketball fix. First there is the practice mode where gamers can develop the necessary skills to play the game more effectively. Quick Start is where players can instantly jump into the action. The CPU will pick two random teams and the only thing players need to do is choose sides. Exhibition mode allows two teams, which the players get to choose to play. An arcade game is the same as an Exhibition game, but it plays at a faster pace, and the characters makes more exaggerated moves. Season mode lets gamers play through an entire season with any team. This allows games to get a feel for how the game plays out and helps them decide if they want to start a Dynasty. Players can also play in a Tournament that consists of the top 64 teams, and your goal is to see if you have what it takes to beat them all on your bracket.

The real meat of this game is the Dynasty Mode and Career mode. In Dynasty players can take any Division I-A Team and see if they have what it takes and win it all. Gamers will have control over everything in order to get this done. During the season, gamers have to manage the scheduling, dealing with the roster, injuries, and everything else. The Career mode is a multi-season format where the goal is to build a successful coaching career. Players start off in a small school, as an Assistant Coach, but the real goal is to become the Head Coach at a Choice College. As player’s finish off a season, if your stats have improved players will get offers to coach other schools or continue at the current one. This is a neat feature because now players can see what it is like to coach more than one team during the course of a game.

Players can now use the right analog stick to perform spin modes and other moves to confuse defenders. Also it is now easy to identify who is the faster, best shooter, and star of the team due to icons that are under each of the players. Now players can have a little more strategy to get the ball to the best person suited for the job.

One of the biggest flaws in NCAA Final Four 2004 is the controls. At times the game is smooth as silk and other times it is unresponsive. Players can do the exact same play three times and get different results. For example if you go up to make a shot, sometimes you will shoot it and other times you will just go “up and down” even though you are putting the exact same amount of pressure on the shot button. This is not acceptable in a game that requires so much shooting because one missed shot could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

The graphics for this game are modest, but they will not blow you away. The problem is the level of detail, or the lack of it, in all of the characters. While it can be argued that the characters do have little details such as arm and headbands, the overall character is very bland looking. The characters seem to have a high polygonal count, but it does no good if all of the characters look virtually identical. The animation is very disappointing, because the characters seem to move like robots, lacking the flare that other games on the market have.

The audio is a double edge sword, the fight songs and things you normally hear at a college game are there in full force, but the commentary gets old really fast. All of the running, grunting, slam-dunk sounds are present and accounted for. There is nothing really new or stunning that will blow your socks off though.

One of the best things about NCAA Final Four 2004 is the extremely deep online mode; this portion of the game is almost as deep as the Dynasty Mode! Once players create an account, they can choose to do many things, such as selecting a game, chatting, check out tournaments, message boards, fill out surveys, use an email system, and do myriads of other things. It is amazing to see what all players can do online. If that wasn’t enough the game keeps track of the leaders to see who is the highest ranked in this game. There are enough bragging rights in this game to last a lifetime. Even if you are away from your Playstation 2, players can visit http://www.989sportsonline.com to check and see if they have any mail, the tournament brackets, and the leader boards.

NCAA Final Four 2004 is rated E for Everyone. It requires up to 749 KB on your memory card and can play up to 1-8 players (via multitap). To play online you must have the Network Card and broadband or dialup. It also supports the Logitech/PS2 USB Headset.

Gameplay: 6.5
The controls are not reliable in any sense. It is not fun playing a game, when you are constantly worrying if the players will do the commands that you tell them to.

Graphics: 6.4
The character models are bland, and the players move like unrealistic, but this game has no slowdown!

Sound: 6.4
Boring repetitive commentary, but the crowd noise is nice.

Difficulty: Medium
Wrestling with the controls will become more difficult than this game could ever hope to be.

Concept: 7.5
The only thing that this game really has going for it is the deep online mode.

Multiplayer: 9.4
You can play up to eight players in one room or play against people from all around the United States! The online mode is extremely deep and is highly impressive. I never encountered any lag while playing either, which is a good thing.

Overall: 6.8
If 989 Studios put as much effort into next year’s game, as they did in the online mode, they might…no they will be in the running with EA and Sega. With less than reliable controls, and modest graphics, NCAA Final Four 2004 can’t complete with the other basketball games out in the market. Hopefully 989 will get their act together and prove that a first party sports developer can take advantage of the console hardware, and be king of the hill again!