College basketball fans are among the most passionate of any sports fans around. They follow their team through thick and thin while relishing the rivalries and the unique traditions associated with the collegiate game. The excitement comes to a head every spring with the 64 team tournament colloquially known as “March Madness”. It seems like there are always a few people around the office sponsoring brackets, with fans and non-fans alike trying to divine the Final Four and predict the upsets that make the tournament what it is. The question for Xbox 360 owners is, does EA’s NCAA March Madness 08 win the national championship or is the bracket skewed after round one?
The first things players of the 2007 edition of March Madness will notice is that very little has changed from last year. The list of “What’s New” is brief and is met with indifference. The biggest change is the clumsy “Dynamic Post Control”, which gives the gamer some additional controls in the post and on defense. Most of the shot animations were already present in the game, with the AI deciding on the best shot type for a given situation. Now the onus is on the gamer to determine when to try the hookshot and when to employ the fade away jumper. While these two “new” shots are easy to pull off and practical to use, the up and under shot and the up-fake and drive require timing and multiple button presses that are difficult to pull off even on the practice screen.
March Madness 08 has improved upon the ESPN real world news and score offerings that were present in the 2007 incarnation. As before, you have a fully customizable ticker at the bottom of the screen with news and scores from just about any sport or league you can think of, but now the ticker is present on every menu screen, even the in-game pause screen. The ESPN radio podcasts are back and by default are set to play any time you visit one of the main screens. Unfortunately there is no logic to determine if you’ve already heard a particular radio update, so you’ll likely hear the same one multiple times in any gaming session. Until I got fed up and disabled the podcast a typical session for me was boot the game, hear the podcast, play a quick game, hear the same podcast, play a quick online game, hear the same podcast, and so on. As much as I enjoyed hearing updates from ESPN radio, I don’t want to listen to the same one over and over again.
Arguably the greatest enhancement to the year’s edition is the inclusion of 70 classic teams, allowing for dream matchups. Now you can pit the 1972 Bruins against Michael Jordan’s 1982 Tar Heels, or see test the 1987 Hoosiers versus the 1976 Hoosiers. Maybe you’d rather see how the 2004 UCONN team stacks up against the All Time Cincinnati or All Time Valparaiso teams. While most teams will be available from the first time you load up the game, school specific All Time teams are unlocked by beating them in exhibition games. With over 300 teams available in March Madness 08, if you can’t find a great matchup, you’re not trying.
