NCAA Final Four 2004
Written by Byron Blunk on 1/29/2004 for
PS2
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NCAA Final Four 2004
Like most people around America, I’m a college basketball fan for one month a year, but I was hoping to find a new interest for the game when given NCAA Final Four 2004 to review. Unfortunately, for me and anyone else who bought this game, 989 shows once again why EA dominates the sports genre for console gaming, and that they should fold up shop. This is the worst basketball game I have played in years, and in fact, this game reminds me of games released for the PS1 over 5 years ago. I am completely at a loss as to where to start ranting and raving.
Let’s start off with the sound, I mean it’s a basketball game so at least they can’t screw that up too much, and sure they have sneakers squeaking and there’s a decent clang when you miss a shot, but that’s where the similarity to college hoops ends. The play by play is enough to put you to sleep; the commentators rarely say anything other than “takes the shot” or “for three” and if they do happen to say something, the timing is so bad that someone has already rebounded the ball before they finish their captivating speech. At least you can hear them clearly, because after all this is college athletics and you wouldn’t want to hear the crowd or school specific chants. This game makes Cameron Indoor Stadium feel like a library; rarely did the crowd noise rise above a whisper, even when I opened a game 15-0 against rival UNC. At least when they called a timeout I was able to hear a shoddily recorded version of my fight song that sounded so uninspired and out of key that my players decided to go scoreless for the next seven minutes.
At least the players look decent, though I am not sure why half the guys on my team sport those 1980’s goggles that Kareem and James Worthy wore. I swear I haven’t seen a pair of those since soft contact lenses were invented. Apparently, the student health insurance isn’t up to par at Kentucky.
Gameplay is where the game’s real faults start to shine through. I mean sure, I could see how a little thing like collision detection could be a pain when dealing with a game involving a backboard, but nothing screams “rushed production job” like seeing your player rebound the basketball through the backboard, then come back up under and through the glass to dunk it for two. The game moves in a stop-start manner, players will be streaking down at the press of the speed button, but when you press shoot as they enter the lane for a nice dunk or lay-up, you’ll instead find your man stopping, delaying, and then bursting up at almost 2x speed with a dunk. That is of course if you are lucky enough for the game to register you pressed the button. When I first started playing this game, I thought my controllers were on the fritz, turns out FF04 could not handle too many inputs in a short period. This makes for a real fun time when you are trying to run a fast break, or pass the ball around quickly to setup a game winning three pointer.
Of course you don’t find yourself needing to pass or run many set piece plays, since you can just hold down the turbo button and blow past everyone after you inbound or rebound the basketball and attempt to dunk (assuming the button gets pressed and your player doesn’t decide to pitch a tent in the lane) on every possession. It is a good thing that during a season you can choose how you want your boys to train to improve their play, forget shooting and defense, set it all to conditioning because they will need it.
Dynasty mode is a complete insult to anyone who wants to play more than one season of the game, though I am not sure why you would with all the negatives. The recruiting screen looks like something out of a bad game of Risk; I haven’t seen a map of the United States that bad since 4th grade. As for recruiting itself, it does not take a lot of effort. You spend all your time talking to the top 10 high school players in the country every year and at least half will windup choosing to go to your school. Nothing like making an easy game even easier by having the entire McDonalds All-American team on the floor for you by your second year as coach. After you do this, take notice as I did that the Final 4 is in San Antonio year after year after year. Apparently, it was too difficult to come up with a few more floor paintjobs to liven things up a bit. I would say they were saving room to store all the mascots in the game, but I counted about 15 unique mascots so far, and if your team does not have a mascot in the game, you get this generic big green frog to inspire you.
When playing NCAA Final Four 2004 I was reminded of that old TV show The Critic and his catch phrase of “it stinks, it stinks, it stinks!” It is truly a sad day when a new game makes me appreciate just how good Double Dribble actually was.
Let’s start off with the sound, I mean it’s a basketball game so at least they can’t screw that up too much, and sure they have sneakers squeaking and there’s a decent clang when you miss a shot, but that’s where the similarity to college hoops ends. The play by play is enough to put you to sleep; the commentators rarely say anything other than “takes the shot” or “for three” and if they do happen to say something, the timing is so bad that someone has already rebounded the ball before they finish their captivating speech. At least you can hear them clearly, because after all this is college athletics and you wouldn’t want to hear the crowd or school specific chants. This game makes Cameron Indoor Stadium feel like a library; rarely did the crowd noise rise above a whisper, even when I opened a game 15-0 against rival UNC. At least when they called a timeout I was able to hear a shoddily recorded version of my fight song that sounded so uninspired and out of key that my players decided to go scoreless for the next seven minutes.
At least the players look decent, though I am not sure why half the guys on my team sport those 1980’s goggles that Kareem and James Worthy wore. I swear I haven’t seen a pair of those since soft contact lenses were invented. Apparently, the student health insurance isn’t up to par at Kentucky.
Gameplay is where the game’s real faults start to shine through. I mean sure, I could see how a little thing like collision detection could be a pain when dealing with a game involving a backboard, but nothing screams “rushed production job” like seeing your player rebound the basketball through the backboard, then come back up under and through the glass to dunk it for two. The game moves in a stop-start manner, players will be streaking down at the press of the speed button, but when you press shoot as they enter the lane for a nice dunk or lay-up, you’ll instead find your man stopping, delaying, and then bursting up at almost 2x speed with a dunk. That is of course if you are lucky enough for the game to register you pressed the button. When I first started playing this game, I thought my controllers were on the fritz, turns out FF04 could not handle too many inputs in a short period. This makes for a real fun time when you are trying to run a fast break, or pass the ball around quickly to setup a game winning three pointer.
Of course you don’t find yourself needing to pass or run many set piece plays, since you can just hold down the turbo button and blow past everyone after you inbound or rebound the basketball and attempt to dunk (assuming the button gets pressed and your player doesn’t decide to pitch a tent in the lane) on every possession. It is a good thing that during a season you can choose how you want your boys to train to improve their play, forget shooting and defense, set it all to conditioning because they will need it.
Dynasty mode is a complete insult to anyone who wants to play more than one season of the game, though I am not sure why you would with all the negatives. The recruiting screen looks like something out of a bad game of Risk; I haven’t seen a map of the United States that bad since 4th grade. As for recruiting itself, it does not take a lot of effort. You spend all your time talking to the top 10 high school players in the country every year and at least half will windup choosing to go to your school. Nothing like making an easy game even easier by having the entire McDonalds All-American team on the floor for you by your second year as coach. After you do this, take notice as I did that the Final 4 is in San Antonio year after year after year. Apparently, it was too difficult to come up with a few more floor paintjobs to liven things up a bit. I would say they were saving room to store all the mascots in the game, but I counted about 15 unique mascots so far, and if your team does not have a mascot in the game, you get this generic big green frog to inspire you.
When playing NCAA Final Four 2004 I was reminded of that old TV show The Critic and his catch phrase of “it stinks, it stinks, it stinks!” It is truly a sad day when a new game makes me appreciate just how good Double Dribble actually was.
It's definitely one to pass over and if you want an NCAA basketball game for the PS2, try the EA version.
Rating: 3.1 Bad
* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.
