PlayStation 3
Released in 2007 by 2K Sports
Grade: C+
I am frankly shocked this game is remembered so fondly. It’s got many significant flaws. It’s 2K’s last college basketball game, and it’s often compared to EA’s last college basketball game, NCAA Basketball 10. The 2K series became the undisputed king of video basketball in time, but as far as college ball goes, I strongly prefer EA’s final offering.
Where it falls in the series
2K basketball started with NBA 2K, then added college installments with NCAA College Basketball 2K3 on PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. This is the second on PS3, and the last ever. Of course, 2K continued its NBA games and has been putting EA to shame year after year for a while now.
Praises
The basic controls are crisp. It’s easy to get around, easy to pass, and easy to shoot.
Defensive controls are pretty intuitive too. It’s a good challenge staying in good defensive position, and intuitive to react with a block or rebound command.
One piece of logic this game gets right is the shooting percentages on jumpshots, and how the defense affects the likelihood of a shot going in.
This is one of the few basketball games that I find easier to play with the TV-style sideline camera than with a vertical camera.
The graphics aren’t beautiful, but they are certainly very clear and make it easy to tell what’s going on.
The sound is solid, with an especially raucous crowd sound to help emphasize the game’s “sixth man” feature, giving the home team a boost at times.
Gripes
Players start and stop on a dime. When they bump into each other, they don’t absorb each other’s contact.
The basketball logic comes up short. You may discover tricks that generate baskets, but they have little resemblance to actual basketball plays. With one certain play, I learned to sneak a pass to a guy under the basket and quickly flip it in, a play that would be stopped by any competent team.
The jumpshot animation looks awkward, so it can be difficult to time right.
The steal command is slow and awkward, often causing a foul. You can use the right thumbstick for steals and putting your hands up, but it doesn’t work well like it does in later 2K games.
It seems like nobody can ever drive to the basket in a realistic way, yet you can still clumsily end up near the hoop and make a floater, which just feels lucky when it happens.
The plays you can call on the fly are pretty hit and miss, and they don’t have much continuous motion. Without calling plays constantly, your players literally stand in place.
The zone defenses don’t look right. The players are often very bunched up. In general, the players also seem large compared to the amount of space on the court.
There are an awful lot of putbacks, which seems to be a problem going all the way back to NBA 2K.
To shoot free throws, you tilt the controller up and then down. A simple “hold the button” system would have been fine.
The action overall just seems to lack the intensity of college basketball. Whatever chaos is happening out there isn’t the “good chaos” I’m looking for.