Buy ESPN College Hoops 2K5

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Gameplay is RIGHT ON!!

Finally. This game is on the mark. My point of view is from legacy mode. Legacy mode is when you start out as a coach of a small school (I chose Western Illinois), and compete.

You scout your own high school talents. You visit them at home. You call them. They visit you. You are given scholarships to offer. You decide what your team will practice on. Offense. Defense. Shooting. Post play. All ON A DAILY BASIS!! If you decide to fly to New York to visit a player. You will be absent from practice for a couple of days, leaving your assistants in charge... or visa versa.

Gameplay is realistic as it comes. Shooting percentages ring true. Free throw shooting is realistic. Comes down to timing each individual shooters style of shooting.

I started out the season with a very tough schedule and I'm very good with ESPN COLLEGE HOOPS GAMES. Control are similar to previous games which I've owned. Right off the bat, I played the Iowa Hawkeyes... I hung with them for awhile... it was hard, but I did... it was close at halftime... but then my team ran out of gas and Iowa became very tough to stop. VERY REALISTIC!!

As Western Illinois... I played the number 2 team in the country 2 games later... and lost badly... again... REALISTIC... 106-65.

As the season has gone along... I, as the head coach, decided my team needed much work on defense... therefore, I garnered my practices as such. I work extra hard on defense... and to my much impressed surprise... my team improved in that area. I started off the season 2-6... then 4-8... and have won 11 straight to finish off the season 15-8.

This game rocks!! If you like realism in your college basketball game... this one is it!! Hands down. And belive me... I've been searching for this very thing.

You feel like a coach, and in my point of view... you feel like an underdog when you're Western Illinois.

Not to mention... look at the price!! Snatch this up and don't listen to these kids who are criticizing really dumb things. By the way... the announcing is very good. Sometimes it is off, a little, but other times they say some really cool and insightful things, sometimes even making you go... "Wow. It's as if this announcer is really watching my game.

UPDATE: A couple of flaws I've noticed is that the officiating is very anger inducing. They'll call charging on you when the guy is obviously running right along side you. You'll go up to shoot and the ball will be blocked out of bounds by a defender... and it's called out of bounds on YOU!! Everytime.

These are small errors. They'll make you angry... but what official doesn't.

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In reading the negative reviews, most of them are from kids, who are under the age of 13. With their attention span less than 10 minutes for everything, do you honestly think they would appriciate the realism of NCAA College hoops or instead flock to the Arcade style of March Madness where you just mash buttons endlessly?

College Hoops takes off where the previous installment left off and builds on each feature. The post play is much improved over last year's title, though executing some moves in the post is frustrating. Turnovers occur more frequently now when you make stupid passes. Balls no longer just "materialize" through defenders to get to the player receiving the pass. If a defender is in the way, the ball is going to bounce off him. You have to make intelligent, on-the-court decisions.

The gameplay may be adjusted with sliders. Personally, I like to make it challenging so games are much more realistic. It isn't fun (or realistic) when you win every game 150-38. If Duke is playing UNC, the game SHOULD be within 10 points. If Duke is playing Radford, well, a blowout SHOULD occur. I like to adjust the sliders to make dunks and layups easy (they are hard on the default setting) and make jump shots a bit more challenging while increasing the defense for both the human and AI. This way, you can play games with realistic scores and stats and feel somewhat satisfied when you play as Creighton and defeat Illinois by 3.

Recruiting is much more advanced than the 2004 title. It is a bit overwhelming at first, but after awhile and a few times doing it, it really grows on you and you realize how much more effective and effecient this version is. You have a pre-determined amount of recruiting points, depending on the size of your school. Small schools have 3000. Mid majors have 4000. Major schools have 5000 (Major schools would include the likes of Fresno State, the A-10 teams like St. Joe and Xavier), and Power schools have 6000 (the big boys like the Big 12 and ACC). Each action you choose to do in recruiting has a point and time value associated with it. Your assistants help you in recruiting if they can, or if they aren't good at it, you don't want them to help. You can email recruits, call them, visit them, scout their games, invite them to your campus, and offer them scholarships. But unlike last year, you can do this all season long during the recruiting period. You can visit a player up to 6 times and you can call him always, limited to one call per week per recruit (as long as you have the points available).

This is a very in depth game and is very good. It appeals to the older crowd though, as kids get frustrated by the realism and non-arcade style. You can make this game like that with the sliders, but it just isn't fun IMO.

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This game is a very good game. It's got a very cool legacy mode and that is usually why i buy sports game is for the franchise modes. This mode is decent with a few problems but overall is ok. A new addition is the coaching carousel which is pretty realistic. A good coach from a crappy school goes to a better, but struggling school and the crappy school gets a crappy coach from a crappier school.I like how there is goals for yourself to accomplish. For instance 200 or 500 career wins.The gameplay is a little diffucult at first but then it gets much easier once you get used to it.But the gameplay is pretty fun.I also like the juke box and the ice hockeye in the student lounge.This game cost me 20$ and i got it causeEA NCCA College was 50$ at the time,but now that it is only 30$ maybe now it is better deal.

Honest reviews on ESPN College Hoops 2K5

You might write off the above as just blind praise, but I'm serious. ID has been considered the only sim ball game to come out this gen. Actually this gen has been pretty sad unless you count DC. NBA 2K1 was really on to something then 2K2 started a downward trend. This game also beats down NBA Live 2005 and NBA 2K5. Right off the bat it's obvious the game was made with SIM priority.

The first thing I did was go online(bb only for some reason) and was instantly hooked. This game is easily the finest head to head basketball game you'll find mainly because it's pretty much cheese proof. Go jack up 3's and they won't drop. Try to crossover and just turbo into the paint, you'll get a well-deserved charge. Pass the ball corner to corner and you'll most likely get a TO. More often then not the person who knows their team and takes the smartest shots wins. The game is still paint-camper friendly with a LOONG 3 sec. violation and on default(not tweakable online) in-close shots are slightly too hard. But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Lag isn't a factor. The interface is Sega's best yet and is on par with XBL. The big draw for me is the league play...it makes playing Legacy mode difficult to go back to.

Another positive is the fouls. On default hacking away will get you on the bench quick, this really helps online. Plenty of shooting fouls are called, and the loose ball foul from the NBA game is back but not called enough. This is the ONLY game besides ID to get fouls right, and the ONLY game to get it right online. Free throw shooting is great, you can't master the system so you'll hit around the NCAA ave. of high 60 %'s at times instead of going 28/29.

All of these aspects and some great rim physics combine for a great game. No other basketball game has gotten all of the above things right, if someone tells you so they are lying. Another thing, turn off biorythim. Your kids will go through streaks without it, this just makes things uneven.

Speaking of Legacy it's set up really well. I'm not far, but one problem is the league leaders seem random. Other than that it's good, it's just at times playing the cpu. can get redundant fast.

The graphics have improved a lot and the view angles are great. No more jerky animation, most of them are really nice this year. The stadiums feel different from one another.

Don't worry about NBA 2K5's faults, they are much more subdoed in this game.

To me college basketball is better than the NBA so I kind of like playing this better. Todays NBA(and videogames) are dilluted by flash and selfishness, that will get you blown out in this game.

All is not well, however nothing here is a "gamekiller".

Here's the gripe list:

Running plays on offense is clunky. Mainly because players take too many steps after catching the ball.

Consolidation. If someone is inches behind me I don't want the player cocking the ball back for a two-handed dunk so it can get blocked. Same thing with layups. Sometimes the window of opportunity is wiped away because of an unecessary double pump fake reverse layup that could of just been kissed off the glass.

For whatever reason nobody covers the outlet pass on the break.

Traps/presses are still too easy to break.

Although it's coming along, the main fault of just about every Sega Sports title is still around. Playing the cpu. can bore the daylights out of me. Each team for the most part plays like the other. I used to enjoy one player on the genesis Live games but in this game the cpu is just bland. One very annoying thing is the amount of alley-oops the cpu. will resort to at times.

No ESPN videogame would be without glitches. The clipping from NBA 2K5 is still here(not as bad), so you'll see weird stuff like balls getting blocked go in etc...

The sound/atmosphere is poor, kind of a downer b/c CB is known for it's crazy enviornment. The play-by-play is average, but the chants are universal and get repetitive fast. So you don't hear "go state go" at Michigan State you hear "here we go Spartans here we go" and after a few games it's unbearable. The crowd is average, but completely cut off. The band doesn't come in and out at the appropiate times.

Overall the good easily outweighs the bad. If you are a fan of b-ball(NBA or college) this is a must-have. If you want more sloppy arcade-style play, keep playing your NBA Live/2K.

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I have been a loyal consumer of the ea sports march madness basketball games since the very first one. Untill I started trying out the Espn games under the sega name. first of all the price is worth a game that is just okay but not great. But this game does live up to the hype. the game goes deeper in the aspect of being a head coach then I have ever seen before and recruiting is just like you are in charge. and it has the best graphics I have ever seen in a sports game. I can't wait to try more espn games in the future.