EA Sports March Madness or ESPN NCAA Basketball?
 

Alright. I need to get a college basketball game. I just need it. For PS2. So which one, March Madness 2004 or ESPN NCAA Basketball 2K4? I haven't gotten a NCAA basketball sim in the current generation so I have no clue which series is better.

March Madness is getting better reviews than ESPN's game. That kind of surprised me. I'm used to Sega's BB games being better overall.

I've played both and ESPN is definitely the way to go. March Madness seemed like I was playing on ice, while ESPN handled much tighter. Plus, the legacy mode is not to be missed by any sports gamer.

High school recruiting is awesome in ESPN. You can play high school recruits games to see how they play in game. I love it and Im not a big basketball fan, but ive already played thru two full seasons and Im working on a third

Being a huge college bball fan - I bought both, but once again, both games are still not up to par, IMO, but March Madness gets the slight edge this year. ESPN suffers like all ESPN bball games in that it still plays too deliberate and slow, has annoying collision detection problems, and is simply "throw your joystick down" frustrating sometimes when it comes to taking shots near the basket (something MM has addressed by having separate shoot and dunk/lay-up buttons). If you like the ESPN NBA game you'll like ESPN College Hoops because it's simply the pro version with college uniforms on. One HUGE advantage: the legacy mode is much better than MM, and is a deep involved process.

MM plays better, and "feels" more like college basketball, but sometimes you wonder how this game was made by the same company that brought you NCAA 2004. Little things like trying to name your players on your team, are set up horribly: scan down the list until you finally get to your school, edit one (and only one)player, save, repeat. Very slow when the school you are editing players for a school whose name starts with a letter like M. the dynasty mode just seems thrown in at the end, it's not as involved as NCAA 2004, let alone ESPN's college bball. And the extra stuff like the top 25, the All-America list, the stats - are all garbage. The top 25 is arbitrary (I had a Syracuse team at #1 despite being 7-6, while I had a Duke team lose 2 games all season but finish 23rd). It's like EA knew they needed these features, but spent no time on them at all to make them believable like they did with NCAA 2004. But the actual gameplay is better than ESPn and it generates a feeling of excitement more than the ESPN version. You feel like it's college bball.

Overall both games deserve a rental at least, and then maybe buying one (or waiting until a price drop), but neither are a "must have" game (these reviewers on some of the sites that are giving both games 8+ out of 10 are smokin' somethin'). I can't see myself playing either game 3 months from now, whereas I'm still faithfully playing NCAA 2004. In my opinion, given the fact that both companies have a track record of some damn fine sports games, it's disappointing that they continue to drop the ball with their college bball games