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College Hoops 2K7

For the past couple seasons at least, I’ve found myself logging far more hours into 2K Sports’ college game than I invest in their pro franchise, the NBA 2K series. Some folks have often asked me why, and the answer is simple: sure, the NBA has superstars like Shaq, Garnett, Iverson and Wade, but College Hoops has superior game play.

Call me Flip Saunders if you wish – the former Wolves and current Pistons coach who may leave the NBA to coach the U of M Gophers – but in a lot of ways, there’s just more drama to the college game than to the pro game. Part of this is the shorter season; every game means more than the NBA’s inflated 82-game schedule.

That also means you get to concentrate more on player development and recruiting, which really adds some drama to the mix. And with all due respect to the NBA Finals, nothing in pro sports short of the Super Bowl beats the drama of Selection Sunday and March Madness on the way to the NCAA Final Four.

It also helps that College Hoops 2K7 offers a unique career mode that puts you in the role of a college coach – you can choose either real ones or create one of your own – and sets up loads of career achievements to reach over the course of time. When you start off as a new coach, you’ll be lucky to be hired by a .500 team in one of the real nondescript small conferences. It’s a challenge because unless you really know the strengths of your own game play style and can find a college that is a good fit, it’ll be hard to distinguish yourself and move up the college coaching ranks.

Now, I know I like to play with at least one good, very tall center and a hot small forward. That’s because I like the dominating center for rebounds and strong post play, while the speedy small forward is good for breakaway plays down the court. After scanning every single team willing to hire me, I finally found a good match with Hampton.

After two seasons of making the Big Dance but not getting that far, I finally got my big break and landed with a talent-stocked mid-major team I’m growing to love, Creighton. Right now, I plan on bidding my time there until a position opens up at Minnesota or Oregon, and I just took Creighton to the Big Dance and won my opening-round game.

The coaching career mode adds RPG elements that really impact the game. When you start you, you’re graded C- in all aspects of coaching, but you can upgrade five points worth of stats right away. Each season, depending on your achievements, you get more points to upgrade your skills as a coach. The higher your coaching skills go, the easier it is to achieve things in the game. It’s an addictive mode that really invites you to play multiple seasons, even if you decide to sim past some of the cakewalk games.

This year, though, 2K Sports gives you more ways to play College Hoops than ever before. If you don’t want your team to overachieve by your mastery of the controls alone, you can now choose to just coach the game, calling plays, making substitutions and such from the sidelines. Or you can use the new HoopCast mode to sim a game while still making key decisions. HoopCast is bogged down by 2K Sports new, weird, clunky right-analog-stick-driven menu system, but once you get a hang of it, it works well.

Further upgrades to the career/legacy mode is a weekly highlight show – something this reviewer suggested last year – starring Greg Gumble and Clark Kellogg. Another welcome addition is that, for those who miss out on Selection Sunday and the big dance, the Little Dance – otherwise known as the NIT Tournament – has also been added in, giving the game more realism.

One minor disappointment is the elimination of a “local paper write-up” after each game. Sure, after a couple seasons the stories became repetitive, but it was a fun little enhancement that was take out this year for no apparent reason. Boo! The new create-a-chant is a nice feature, though. The voice work is solid. Some menu functions, like setting your lineups, are still very hard to find and completely undocumented. The right-analog-driven menu navigation system needs work so that you can back up one menu layer by hitting “B”.

Graphically, the game is a big improvement over last year’s severely-delayed installment, putting College Hoops 2K7 about on par with the NBA game. However, there is a flaw and that is the variety of camera modes available. Although there are a wealth of camea modes to choose from, there are only a couple that seem to work well as others either draw too close or too far back, each of which creates problems. Also, unlike the NBA game, players sometimes move in a herky-jerky way, and the AI still isn’t performing at a next-gen level.

The online play via Xbox Live works well and so far I haven’t had the problem of College Hoops charging me with a “quit game” when I get booted from the network involuntarily. However, so far I haven’t been booted mid-game while playing College Hoops 2K7, so that may have something to do with it. The wealth of online play modes available in NBA 2K7 is reflected here as well, although I will say that the “news” section of the online desk has been completely barren so far, a major disappointment.

With far more intriguing career game play, College Hoops 2K7 comes up as my personal favorite hoops title on the market this year for the third year in a row! While NBA 2K7 is far better than NBA Live 07, when it comes to hoops game play, nothing beats this game! It may not have quite as much graphic polish as the NBA games, but the game play is far more engaging and intriguing.

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Tags: College Hoops 2K7

Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Dec 21st, 2006 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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