Review by: William Abner

EA has rebranded its college basketball game. The March Madness name has been synonymous with “not good” in sports game circles for years now and with 2K Sports getting out of the college hoops business, and taking its fantastic college basketball franchise with it, it was time for EA to take the reigns and provide a decent alternative. The result is the new NCAA Basketball 09, which is the best college basketball game EA Sports has made in years. It’s still not close to 2K’s now defunct College Hoops series but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

You have to look at this game on its own merits. If you compare it to past March Madness titles it shines like a bright beacon of hope, but there are significant issues that EA needs to address if this series is to be considered an elite EA Sports franchise.

First and foremost, the game requires massive tweaks in order to resemble college basketball. There are many in game “sliders” that adjust the gameplay and you will need to spend a lot of time messing with these settings in order for it to reach its potential. If you simply pop in the disc and start playing – the game’s a mess. There’s virtually no defense played at all, dunks start flying like a pick up game at a local Rec center, and there are a gaudy number of turnovers from ridiculous passes attempted by the CPU. Worse still– players rarely miss. If you play on default settings you can expect teams to shot 75% from the floor regardless of who is playing.

It’s enough to make you want to casually place the disc back in the case and bury it in the backyard. Why EA would make the default game play like this is anyone’s guess, but if resembling the real game is a priority then you’ll need to start messing with the settings. The good news is that if you do spend some time with it you can get it to play a significantly better game; not a great game, but a serviceable one. I realize that “serviceable’ is rarely worth $60 but when you consider how far behind the March Madness series was, serviceable is actually a heck of an achievement. After slider tweaking the game is also a competitive 2-player game -- you need to keep this game's AI as far out of the equation as you can. NCAA 09 doesn't make it easy to like, but if you have a buddy to play against it's worth the effort.