What does a Duke student and a North Carolina student have in common? They both
applied to Duke. Yes, college basketball is back. Let the heckling, face-painting
and “Oh” chanting begin.

The solid brand of basketball gameplay returns in College Hoops 2K7, along
with everything else from 2K6. In fact, aside from some minor control tweaks
and a few updated menus, the latest offering from 2K Sports is practically identical
to 2K6. That’s a good thing, in a way, considering 2K6 was an impressive title.
But it’s also a lazy way to end the current-generation, and if you already have
2K6, it’s hard to recommend a purchase for what amounts to little more than
a roster update on the Xbox. If 2K had put in the same effort as it did the
360 version, then we’d have something. What we have left is a good basketball
game that needs a kick in the pants moving forward.

On the floor, a decent three-dimensional crowd cheers your every move. It’s
the same crowd noise from the last few years, but a few team-specific chants
will get you in the mood to paint your face, or at least to keep playing through
Legacy mode. Legacy is among the deepest franchise modes in sports games. With
in-depth recruiting, a fun and often hilarious email system, training camps
for high school players, Ju-Co transfers, coaching charisma and team meetings,
you’ll have a lot to do. None of the slick features that went into the 360 made
its way down to current-gen, however. Bryant Gumbel and Clark Kellogg return
in the studio with Selection Sunday and a season kickoff-show, which are great
touches. While their lip synching is laughable and they move like animatronic
characters better suited to entertain ankle-biters at Chuck E. Cheese’s, the
information is great. You’ve got your preseason All Americans and top rankings,
and the crew has something to say about everything.

The basic gamemodes appear, including rivalry games, the campus store, and
the Pontiac Tournament. For some reason, 2K did not update the seedings from
2K6. What’s worse, 2K6 wasn’t updated from 2K5. That’s just plain sloppy. If
you want to set up a bracket with proper rankings, you’ll have to do it yourself.

But what matters most is gameplay, and 2K7 will be no stranger to you if you’ve
played previous 2K Sports basketball games. Isomotion, the system of crossovers
and dribble moves, returns, although you’ll have a very tough time trying to
crack the defense for a bucket. You’ll need to work the ball, probe the zone,
kick in and out, and utilize a nice array of post moves in order to score. That
is what has made the 2K basketball games the best around for many years. The
controls have been tweaked a bit from 2K6 to resemble NBA 2K7, so you have a
nice hop-step button, the strip-and-rip steal system on the right stick, and,
of course, the shot stick.

What holds the gameplay back are the same old things from years gone by. Players
miss way too many lay-ups and put-backs if a defender is nearby. Passing is
a bit slow and the animations, while smooth and good-looking, are sometimes
too slow and hold up the action. Catching and passing immediately is a problem
on fast breaks, especially when players go through a long, drawn out catching
animation instead of pop-pop-popping the ball down the court. Steals are ridiculous
as you can sometime tally more than 10 a game with one player.

Driving past opponents, controlled by the CPU at least, is more difficult than
ever. Defenders no longer break their ankles on every juke you throw out there,
and too often a drive to the rim results in a collision with a defender where
he simply arm-bars you backward. It’s a block or a charge or some kind of whistle
in real life, but not here. You can drive over and over into a defender and
he’ll keep pushing you away in the same canned animation. This makes for a much
lower-scoring game, also thanks to decent help defense and a combination of
zone formations you don’t seen in the NBA.

On defense, your squad does an admirable job of helping out, when needed. There
are some questionable switches at times, where point guards will end up on a
center. There are a number of nice zone formations to use, the only complaint
being that the players could be more aggressive in denying passes inside. So
if you’re in a 2-3 and the ball is on the left wing with a forward on the left
block and the other three offensive players to the right, it shouldn’t be a
problem for defensive center and the forward on the ball to deny that pass inside.
Too often, it is.

As mentioned, the sound and graphics are virtually the same as last year.
Vern Lundquist and Bill Raftery do a fine job in the booth, although they could
stand to get a bit more excited at times. Nothing beats the duo of Nessler and
Vitale in March Madness, but that’s the benchmark. The crowd is exactly the
same as last year, which is frustrating because it sounds so much better on
the 360 and not here. Visually, the game looks decent, with smooth animations
and a great framerate, although the crowd is made up of triangle people. You
can also take your game on Xbox Live for typical 2K Sports options, like online
leagues and tourneys — still the best online system out there for sports titles.

Closing Comments
2K Sport created a very impressive game… on the Xbox 360. College Hoops 2K7
on the Xbox is more of a cut-and-paste job of 2K6, with virtually identical
graphics and sound. A few nice control tweaks like the jump stop, doesn’t add
anything fresh however. While the presentation, Legacy and online play are all
great, 2K7 feels more like a roster update. It’s a great value if you don’t
have 2K6 and love college hoops. If you do own college hoops, you may just want
to update your rosters.

Review by: IGN.com