NCAA Basketball 09 Gameplay Impressions - RaychelSnr's Blog

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NCAA Basketball 09 Gameplay Impressions Stuck

Posted on November 15, 2008 at 02:57 PM.

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Basically, what you see with the demo is very close to what you get in the final product. So, instead of babbling on about every possible knook and cranny, I'm going to give a basic overview of my thoughts and then take some questions. Check out the demo impressions thread at OS at the following link to get a variety of impressions on the gameplay from a ton of OS users:

http://www.operationsports.com/forums/ea-sports-ncaa-basketball/277794-ncaa-basetball-09-demo-available-impressions-here.html

So now to get down and dirty, what do I think?

NCAA Basketball is a good, but not great game. Which features good but not great action on the basketball court and it features a good but not great set of options. The play-calling is the same as NBA Live, which makes it the best play-calling system for basketball available. The pre-game focuses add a depth of strategy, especially in your dynasty games.

The action on the court is an overall improvement over last year. Guys try to pick off the ball and your teammates do their best to run offensive plays with a bit of a purpose.

Players also tend to play pretty close to their ratings. My shooting percentages and such have been pretty realistic thus far. The huge thing I was looking for was to see if the bad teams shot like bad college teams and if the good teams shot like good college teams. It certainly seems to be the case, as a more athletic team will suffocate the offense of a lower tier team.

As I stated earlier, I can describe the gameplay as good, but not great.

One thing I think is a huge positive is the control feels much more tight to me compared to NBA Live. I haven't had as many instances of losing control of my players because they get stuck in a string of animations. I also somewhat prefer the control scheme of CB over Live, even though they are mostly identical.

One thing that the AI doesn't do very well is go to their star players. In Live, I saw this happen over and over again. I know college basketball is a more team oriented sport, but some of the teams with absolute superstars don't really seem to go to them enough in key situation.

There are a few things I'm not a huge fan of....I have seen numerous backcourt violations because an animation causes a player to cross the half-court line. Players running out of bounds due to a canned animation seems to happen less frequent than in Live, but it still happens.

I will be around most of the day to answer some gameplay questions but I don't have the game with me today unfortunately, so I will try to answer any questions as best as I can!

Comments

# 1 ghm125 @ Nov 15

subs can you make them on the fly like in a 2k game or is it during a timeout or pause the game like last season?

# 2 DirtyJerz32 @ Nov 15

So we know there isn't a practice mode already but, is there any drills the players can run or is it just play with McDAA's to see how they play? And hope to land one? Also, you mentioned there are team socks instead of black. What did you mean? Stripes or solid colors or something?

# 3 larrygiterdone @ Nov 15

damn, i was hoping it was better

# 4 RaychelSnr @ Nov 15

ghm125: From what I have gathered...it definitely appars to just be like last year. I will check again when I am able to play the game again when I finally get home!

# 5 ghm125 @ Nov 15

thanks mmchris man it really sucked last season,if auto sub would work i would be cool with that but it was not an option...how do you not have that option in a game?.....really like the demo its different,but i may just stay with 2k8 with some new rosters for my CH fix?