NCAA March Madness 2005 (PlayStation 2)

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The problems with the player discipline feature run wide and deep. First of all, the rate at which disciplinary problems crop up is alarmingly high. It also feels random. It seems like you can hardly go a few weeks in a season without receiving notice of a player skipping study hall or breaking a team rule. Your only recourse in this situation is to suspend that player for a certain number of games--the longer you suspend a player, the less heat you'll receive from the NCAA. The problem here is that prior to the start of a season, you must set your recruiting and discipline budget. These act dependently of one another, so the more points you set aside for recruiting, the less you have for discipline and vice versa. But it seems counterintuitive that you'd need to spend anything to simply suspend a player. What's even more ludicrous is when you are out of discipline points in the middle of the season, which renders you unable to suspend a player for violating a rule. It was extremely frustrating to see our chosen school ejected from its conference and relegated to a mid-major conference even after levying numerous player suspensions and keeping our NCAA attention well in the "safe" level.

There are other issues with the dynasty mode. Your athletic director, for example, will hound you incessantly throughout the year about spending more time on the recruiting trail, even if you've already secured enough verbal commitments early on to fill all your open scholarship slots. Also, the manner in which you win and lose job security even over the course of a single season is alarmingly volatile. Go on an eight or nine game winning streak and you'll see your job approval rating triple or more. But drop four or five straight in that same year, and you'll lose all of that love in a flash. Fan approval in real life can be that fickle, particularly with big-time programs, but athletic directors are usually not swayed so easily in either direction.

The other aspects of dynasty mode--being able to intervene and play a game from halftime, and year-round recruiting and scouting of high school players--work pretty well. It's just unfortunate that the mode's problems with the player discipline feature and fickle athletic directors overshadow the mode's good points.

Aside from dynasty mode, March Madness 2005 offers quick play, rivalry mode, and a slate of college classics. In the college classics mode, you'll be able to replay famous situations, or in some cases, entire games from the history of men's college basketball. Duke fans can attempt to replay Christian Laettner's miracle shot to beat Kentucky from the 1990 East regional final. UCLA fans can relive Tyus Edney's mad coast-to-coast dash and layup to beat Missouri at the buzzer in 1995. Completing these situations unlocks some of March Madness 2005's 75 all-time classic teams for play in the quick match mode.

Perhaps a more significant feature is the game's online mode. March Madness 2005's front end shares the same front end as other EA Sports games, allowing you to check up on news, look up stats and leaderboards, and see real-time, real-life sports scores on a ticker. You can also set up tournaments and of course play head-to-head against other players online. The unfortunate thing is that on both PS2 and Xbox Live, March Madness 2005's online mode is pretty choppy, which makes the game difficult to play as it throws off your timing on jump shots and free throws. Hopefully the latency issues will get addressed at some point after retail release, but for now, if your primary concern is online play, it's difficult to recommend March Madness 2005.

As far as presentation goes, March Madness 2005 is starting to look a bit dated. Player models lack detail and look a bit blocky compared to other basketball games. What saves the game in the graphics department are the varied animations, especially with regard to dunks and post-entry passes. On the sound front, EA made the odd decision to use licensed songs such as Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle," and Lifehouse's "Hanging by a Moment," played in college band form. Yes, it sounds about as awkward in the game as it does on paper, but thankfully you only have to deal with these tracks in the menu screens. In-game, you'll still hear the more traditional college fight songs, the roar of the crowd, and the familiar commentary of Brad Nessler and Dick Vitale. Those of you who hate Dickie V needn't worry though--you can shut off commentary in the options menu.

In the end, March Madness 2005 strikes us as a game that could have used a bit more polish before being released. It's a shame that the problems with dynasty mode, specifically the faulty implementation of player discipline and overanxious athletic directors, cast a pall over what is otherwise a solid college basketball game. It also remains to be seen whether March Madness 2005 can eventually deliver a decent online experience, as our early play-testing was marred by noticeable lag. If you're in the market for a video basketball game, there are better choices than March Madness 2005.

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