College Hoops 2K6
Another solid title in the 2K franchise.
Tags: College Hoops 2K6 Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by David Hinkle on Feb 7th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| College Hoops 2K6 (title page) | 1-10 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Sports | Yes | ||
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For a lot of people, the NBA is just about unwatchable anymore. Maybe it’s the player’s attitudes that all that really matters to them is the paycheck and they could care less about the game itself. Regardless of whatever reason people aren’t checking out professional basketball anymore, one thing is certain: people LOVE college basketball. Any why not? Young, up-and-coming stars, school spirit, and a real passion permeate every game. These kids love to play and are pouring every ounce of their being into a singular goal, that is, to win.
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College Hoops 2K6 hits the court with a host of new features this year, the most dramatic and time-consuming is the recruiting in Legacy Mode. Here you can recruit high-school ballers into your program and let them either soar or crash and burn. One of the ways you are rated as a coach, afffecting your value, is how well you mold those mounds of clay from High School into the next Allen Iverson. You can start to get the athlete’s attention from their freshman year onto their senior year, when they’d pick a school to attend and play for in college. True-to-life, however, is the NCAA restrictions which progressively allows you to more aggressivley pursue the talent as they go from grade to grade.
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Another aspect of this is the High School basketball camp you can put on. Here, you’ll run kids through several drills, upping their skill and making them more interested in your school. Generating interest in your school is very tough, and depends a lot of which conference you play in and your school’s size. This affects everything from the talent that is interested to how many games you play on the road. Without any prestige, you’re shown little to no respect, making your uphill battle to the top that much steeper. This makes the Legacy Mode difficult, and somewhat frustrating at times, but it shines a very realistic light on coaching, allowing those who enjoy taking on things from the backend as well as on the hardwood plenty of opportunity and hours of fun.
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The controls are tight and intuitive, something we’ve come to expect from 2K’s basketball titles over the years, and allows the player to really perform picks and jukes exceptionally well. This makes running plays that much more fun and easy, a big help when you get to some of the tougher teams. The CPU AI is tough from the outset, so having the ability to smoothly hit a 3 or effectively perform the alley oop is a big help as you battle for the basket.
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Playing on Xbox Live is a snap thanks to the well-designed menu interface. While their aren’t many people online to play against, you can still manage to find a game during the peak hours of the early evening. Gameplay itself, once you find an opponent, is smooth and without slowdown, so once you hit the court it’s all eyes on the prize. The community, or lack thereof, does affect the game’s value online, however, as it just seems that noone is playing anything on the original Xbox anymore. Regardless, when you do get someone to play a full game against, it’s a relatively easy-going experience.
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The graphics are the most unsightly aspect of College Hoops 2K6, as for all the strives in the way of gameplay and recreating a true-to-life experience are hampered by unsightly crowds, fairly blocky player models, and some low-resoolution textures. It’s not as if the game is so bad graphically that you won’t be able to enjoy the excellent gameplay, it’s just kind of hard to stay so immersed when everyone’s uniform looks like it’s covered in syran wrap. Also, some of the animation is a bit on the weak side. The courts, however, manage to showcase a variety of unique setups for each school and often look immaculate.
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College Hoops 2K6 is does almost everything well, providing a high-maintenance Legacy mode for the sim-obsessed and a sturdy online mode for those who just want to rip up the courts with their favorite college team. Through wonderful controls, it’s easy to execute even the most complicated play and allows almost anyone to be able to pick up a controller and dunk themselves with reckless abandon. It’s a great game and should honestly be in any b-ball fan’s library.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Legacy mode has a lot to offer + Controls + Smooth online experience |
8.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Graphics - Never a consistent user-base online to play against |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| A ticket to the finest college basketball available. | |
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Tags: College Hoops 2K6
Posted by David Hinkle on Feb 7th, 2006 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 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.
