NCAA Final Four 2001 Preview

The world's best college basketball video game, NCAA Final Four, is ready for another outing on Sony's PlayStation. 989 Sports has built this franchise into a real beauty over the years, and this time around it looks to be the best version yet. Building upon an already solid foundation, 989 is adding enough features this year to make NCAA Final Four 2001 worthy of yet another purchase for college hoops fans.

Final Four 2001 comes complete with over 300 NCAA Division I-A teams from 31 real college basketball conferences including the ACC, Big 12, Big East, SEC, and Big 10. If it's gameplay options you're looking for, NCAA Final Four 2001 should have plenty to keep you busy. You can play a full season with comprehensive stat tracking for 32 different statistics in an attempt to reach the big dance in March, or you can jump directly to the tourney to duke it out in the round of 64. If you choose to play a full season, you can play your way through each school's real schedule and then on to the conference tournament. If your team is fighting it out in the middle of the pack, you may keep your eye on the bubble watch to monitor its chances of making it to the NCAA Tournament. You can also play exhibition games with up to seven of your friends with help of the Multitap or get your slam on in the arcade mode. Each team also comes with its own playbook so that you can play to each squad's strengths and weaknesses. Temple has its smothering match-up zone, Cincinnati has plays specifically designed to get the ball to Kenyon Martin, and Duke has several kick-out plays to feature its three-point shooters.

Final Four runs on the NBA ShootOut game engine. This is good thing. The renditions of the courts are nearly perfect, and the animated cheerleaders, coaches, and crowds add a great deal of realism to the game. 989 included 50 new motion-captured animations courtesy of former college greats Trajan Langdon, Paul Pierce, Jerry Stackhouse, Brevin Knight, and Jason Kidd. Each team has its own unique court, and while the players are skilled proportionally to match their real-world counterparts, their names have been omitted and in several instances, their numbers and skin tones do not match the real starters.

The gameplay hasn't changed much, as the touch shooting option that makes scoring a snap has again made it into Final Four. Icon passing, shooting, cutting, and screening have all been included, so now you feel even more in control of the situation as you bring the ball up the court. You may even intentionally foul or cherry pick, depending upon the situation. Put-back slams and fake-shot passes have been added to this year's version, officially bringing NCAA Final Four's control scheme up to snuff with NBA ShootOut's. The artificial intelligence has also seen some improvements, so 989 is now able to claim that the computer players are the most advanced of any ever implemented in a college basketball video game. The rim physics have been tweaked, so you won't be subjected to the same rebound trajectory time after time. ESPN's Quinn Buckner provides the authentic play-by-play, while 40 different school-specific chants and fight songs are included to push the immersion levels high.

If you're a college hoops fan, NCAA Final Four 2001 is looking like tough competition for EA's March Madness 2001. The preview copy we received seems nearly complete, so the game should have no problem making its early November release date.