Awesome College Basketball Experience!
User Rating: 9.2 | ESPN College Hoops 2K5 XBOX
As great a game as the 2k4 edition of ESPN's College Hoops was, Visual Concepts has outdone itself with 2k5! The gameplay is unbeatable. Legacy mode is huge, with email, management tasks, recruiting tasks, and on and on. It's so deep that, for now, I'm just going to have to concentrate on gameplay and hope the rest of the administration works itself out. You do have the option to manually control administrative tasks, or have it done automatically for you. In addition, VC has improved individual aspects of the game that make it much more enjoyable. The new free-throw engine, while needing some getting used to, it a huge improvement over 2k4's double-arrow, bouncy-ball contrapcion. I also used to struggle in 2k5 getting any rebounds, but this year's game includes an on-floor ball markers, which you use to position your rebounders to make the grab. Graphics have also taken a giant step forward this year. Player movement is much more fluid, and makes the game much more true to the actual game. Player images are sharper, and look less like shaved-down versions of bigfoot. The sound is more or less the same. Same intro music, same menu music, and of course, Mike and Jay are still holdin' it down with the in-game commentary. Not alot of change in this area. I did, on one occassion, throw up an airball, which the crowd let me hear about with the traditional "Airball!" chant. Only the chant was really cheesy, in fact, it was borderline gay. It sounded like they locked up 5 people in a broom closet to record it. Overall, this game was a blast. I've gotten right into legacy mode as the new coach of the Albany Great Danes. Stay tuned as we roll into the America East Conference, working hard for a shot at the big dance!
