NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

[bears5122]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

Been playing for a couple days now. The best word to describe the game is mediocre. Yes it's miles ahead of March Madness, but it still feels like a first release of a game that has been completely re-done. I just feel that this should have been the game that we saw a couple years ago on the 360.

Gameplay wise has it's good and bad. I like the flow at times but get tripped up by the weird and out-of-place animations that sometimes take place. Scoring inside is tougher, but I have found it's really easy to destroy zones. The player rotation doesn't always seem right and it can be exploited.

Dynasty wise is a bit of a disappointment too. Sure it does what it needs to, but there are no extras. The attention to detail is completely missing. I guess it's tough coming over from the 2K series that seemed to focus so heavily on these small things. I also find recruiting to be really easy which is a disappointment.

Overall, I just don't think I'll get deep into this game. Sure I'll play it here and there and maybe even get through a season or two in dynasty. But I won't get completely wrapped up in the game like I did with the 2K series. It just doesn't have enough personality and feels too raw. I'm not disappointed in the game as I was expecting very little, but I am disappointed in EA for letting this series die for so long that they are going to need years to catch up to where they should be.

[countryboy]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

I absolutely love the trophy room in the dynasty mode. Showing the:

National Player of the Year
Final Four MOP
Defensive Player of the Year
Coach of the Year
Freshman of the Year
NCAA Champs
Conference Winners
NIT MVP
NIT Season Tip Off MVP
Maui Iniviational MVP

from last year and all the way back to 1998. Thats sweet.

[oldman]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

Well, I have missed feelings about this game after spending a few hours playing it. Let me preface what I am going to say with I am coming from 2k, so I am going to be doing a lot of comparisons between the two.

Menus: I haven't completely got the hang of the menus yet, so far, especially the menus in your dynasty, I am not a big fan. They are hard to bring up and the thing I hate the most about them is the fact that if you go into something, lets say Manage Rosters, once you exit it the game takes you all the way back to the Dynasty HQ instead of the menu that you were on.

Dynasty mode: I haven't got to mess around with it a whole lot yet. It will be a lot more fun once you have authentic schedules. It seems to have pretty decent depth which is very important to me. Another thing I like is if your team sucks and you are playing another crappy team, their isn't going to be ESPN at your game! On CH2k8, it didn't matter how bad you were, your game was on TV. It is a nice change of pace.

Gameplay: This has a lot of positives and negatives in my mind. A good word for it would be "clunky". Now I know that word means everything moves awkwardly, and the players do, but at the same time its like you can actually feel the weight of the players moving with every movement. I'm still undecided on this, I never noticed how fluid ALL of the players moved on 2k until this. I don't know which one is more realistic but both have their pluses and minuses.

Shooting: Played Buffalo as Army on All Conference. I shot 55% throwing up crazy shots because I didn't have any idea what I was doing yet. Buffalo shot 72%!!! Now, part of that has to do with the fact that I am terrible at defense right now, but still, 72%! This was with default sliders so needless to say, some adjustments are needed. As far as human shooting goes, I didn't feel like you had a lot of control over the shot. I don't know if release point matters or not but it didn't feel like it. It felt like when you shot the ball, it was either going in or it wasn't regardless of what you did.

Defense: I am very intrigued by the defense. First off, the players move a lot slower than 2k so that makes it a lot harded. Second, since you can't just hold down L2 and expect to stay in front of your man you have to actually figure out what you are doing. I am going to have to spend some more time messing with this but as of right now I am awful at! This though is probably the part of the game I am most excited about.

Pick N Roll: I haven't come anywhere close to mastering or even using this half way decent.

I will continue to add to this post as I play the game more.

[crques]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

Shooting: Played Buffalo as Army on All Conference. I shot 55% throwing up crazy shots because I didn't have any idea what I was doing yet. Buffalo shot 72%!!! Now, part of that has to do with the fact that I am terrible at defense right now, but still, 72%! This was with default sliders so needless to say, some adjustments are needed. As far as human shooting goes, I didn't feel like you had a lot of control over the shot. I don't know if release point matters or not but it didn't feel like it. It felt like when you shot the ball, it was either going in or it wasn't regardless of what you did.

So what level are you playing on?

[countryboy]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

So what level are you playing on?

he's playing on All Conference

[CS10029]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

Does this game have something similar to 2K? Where you start as a lower level school and work your way up.

[tgray225]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

I'm so mad i rented this game!!! Has EA spinkled a few bucks to my trusty friends here @ OS.This freakin game is HORRIBLE! DAM DAM DAM!!!

Clunky
Freaked up Dynasty
Game play ok at best
Not worth $60 bucks for dam sure!
2k is still the champ for sim junkies!

"Dis some fragileNackle Bull"

[CS10029]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

I'm so mad i rented this game!!! Has EA spinkled a few bucks to my trusty friends here @ OS.This freakin game is HORRIBLE! DAM DAM DAM!!!

Clunky
Freaked up Dynasty
Game play ok at best
Not worth $60 bucks for dam sure!
2k is still the champ for sim junkies!

"Dis some fragileNackle Bull"

You type silly.

[crques]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

he's playing on All Conference

Duh....I see that now that I read his post again. I had a ******** moment there. Thanks. :wink:

[countryboy]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

I'm so mad i rented this game!!! Has EA spinkled a few bucks to my trusty friends here @ OS.This freakin game is HORRIBLE! DAM DAM DAM!!!

Clunky
Freaked up Dynasty
Game play ok at best
Not worth $60 bucks for dam sure!
2k is still the champ for sim junkies!

"Dis some fragileNackle Bull"

yes all of us that are enjoying the game have been paid $500K apiece by EA to say nothing but good things about the game. Hey maybe we lied, but we are now $500K richer.

Just to elaborate a bit, what about the Dynasty makes you call it "freaked up" because I am curious to know. Plus I am intrigued to see what other cool catchphrases you come up with.

[CS10029]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

Does this game have something similar to 2K? Where you start as a lower level school and work your way up.

This is kind of important to me, in regards to a purchase or not. Anything?

[J-Unit40]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

I don't know why, but I am having a blast playing this game. Sure, it's not exactly the smoothest game to find its way into my PS3, but for some odd reason, I enjoy it. The animations in certain situations definitely need to be smoothed out for 2010.

I love moving the ball around and making the extra pass to find the open shot. The inside/outside game is fun to set up and penetrating and pitching it fun too.

Now that I have settled on some shooting sliders, I like it even more because not every type of shot is finding it's way to the bottom of the net 65% of the time.

The arenas and crowds are just awesome. Simply awesome!

My main gripe (not gameplay related) is the sim engine. That will always be in the back of my head that the star players don't get enough minutes. I wish that could be patched or something. I have yet to find a workaround.

[countryboy]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

Just finished the first game of my dynasty as I beat the Jaguars of South Alabama at Freedom Hall 80-59.

The game was pretty much over midway through the first half. They stayed within 1-3 pts for the first 5-8 minutes of the game, but I quickly turned it on and got up by 15 and never looked back.

Clark had 19, Samuels had 14 and Jennings had 10 as they couldn't handle the big guys down low. I kept switching defenses and keeping them off balance as they took ill advised shots, turned the ball over, and were called for 8 charging calls and I made them hurry when they didn't want to.

I am off to Creighton to play the Blue Jays on the road. I tried to get my schedule as accurate as possible, but its tough to get small teams to play you. Plus, I wanted to remind Chad Millard what he walked out on.

Damn, I am enjoying this game.

[countryboy]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

This is kind of important to me, in regards to a purchase or not. Anything?

yes it does.

[J-Unit40]

Re: NCAA Basketball 09 Impressions

This is kind of important to me, in regards to a purchase or not. Anything?

Something like a closed legacy? I believe there is. I'll check on this in a bit for you. Someone else made mention of this earlier in the week.