While NCAA Final Four 2000 isn't by any means the best basketball game for the PlayStation, it is a sound college basketball game. It's loaded with all the modes and options you've come to expect, and it features moderately good graphics and gameplay. Though it won't wow the veteran video-game basketball fan, it should make any college-hoops fan happy.
You have your choice of several modes of play, such as exhibition, season, tournament, and arcade. Each mode lets you adjust the game's parameters, such as length, difficulty, and speed. You can also select the difficulty of your computer opponent from four settings: freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior. At the freshmen level, the computer team is fairly competent but not very aggressive. At the senior level, the computer becomes quite aggressive and wastes little time in finding a man with an open shot. One thing that's true of the game on any difficulty is that both you and the computer can aggressively steal the ball and block shots. You really have to work at keeping the ball away from the computer when working it around the court, and you must also make sure that when you take the shot you are fairly open.
Taking shots in NCAA Final Four 2000 is one of the best things about the game, since you use this great system called touch shooting. When you shoot the ball, a little meter comes up with a bar that rises as your player ascends to release the ball. When the bar reaches the shoot marker, you release the button. The closer the top of the bar is to the shoot marker, the more likely your shot will go in.
The controls and overall feel of the game are pretty good. The controls are quite responsive, and you have a wide array of moves that you can execute to get closer to the basket. Some of the moves, like crossovers, spins, and behind-the-back dribbling are easy and effective to use. Equally as easy and effective to use are the plays, such as alley-oops and screen plays, which really do help you create an opportunity to score.
Visually, NCAA Final Four 2000 looks great. The game features more than 200 animations for the various moves that the players perform, including 22 different dunks. The animation of the players is very fluid and seems quite true to life. In addition, all the player models are individually scaled to size so that they accurately represent their real-life counterparts. In the audio department, the game does a nice job of re-creating the sounds and feel of a college game with play-by-play calls by Quinn Buckner, crowd chants, and school fight songs.
In the end, NCAA Final Four 2000 is a good game that any die-hard college basketball fan will enjoy. Being able to play as one of the more than 300 Division I-A teams in the game should be a thrill for any college b-ball follower.
