Review by: William Abner

NCAA Basketball 10 is a competent basketball game. I know that’s not a ringing endorsement, and in fact the game is overpriced at $60 and isn’t on par with most of the other games in the EA Sports retinue this year, but when you consider just how awful the March Madness/NCAA Basketball series has been over the years – competent is a big step in the right direction.

There are two areas in which NCAA Basketball 10 excels: its new TV style presentation and the new motion offense that ensures a lot of player movement and less gameplay stagnation.

The presentation looks and sounds almost exactly like an ESPN or CBS broadcast with stat overlays, theme music, and even some vintage camera angles. Adding Gus Johnson for the CBS/Tourney games was a great idea as he adds needed energy to the play by play. I love when Gus does a basketball game, and while he’s obviously better live, you still get a taste of his energy in the game. Vitale and Nessler remain fairly boring and repetitive, but overall the presentation is hard to knock.

The graphics and animation, on the other hand, are far behind what you get with NBA Live 10. Player models look odd and almost uniformly misshaped and the animations are nowhere near as smooth. The best way I can describe the visuals is generic. It’s not a huge detraction, but the difference between the two games is not small.

The gameplay has its ups and downs. The new motion offense is great and the game is much better (after you tweak the gameplay sliders) in allowing defense to actually matter, which was not the case last year. You will see far fewer running one handers by the AI result in two points. If you play sound defense, the AI will miss; I realize this sounds obvious but last year defense was simply non-existant.

This being college hoops, the game needs to model that specific style of play and this is where NCAA 10 falls on its face. College basketball is, like it or not, about the 3-point shot. Yes, there’s more to the game than that, but teams shoot 3-pointers in college like it’s any other shot. In NCAA 10, the AI only looks to shoot the long ball with premier shooters. If a player is rated even slightly above average from behind the arc, he isn’t shooting. There’s no way that a team like Louisville should play a full 40 minute game and fire off only four 3-point attempts. There are a lot of positives on the floor, to be sure, and really the games are technically fun to play – it just doesn’t feel like college basketball.