NCAA Basketball Final Four 97

NCAA Basketball: Final Four '97 hits the hardwood loaded with 64 collegiate teams just in time for March Madness. Due to its lethargic play and slowly scrolling camera, FF '97 fails to live up to the pre-season hype.

Did Someone Say Championship?

FF '97 comes to the court in Exhibition, Season, and Tournament play with a wide selection of teams that includes Kentucky, Georgetown, and UCLA, to name a few. Features include more than 50 dunk animations and on-the-fly play calling.

Players arc presented in the polygonal style, similar to NBA Live '97. Although you have good control of your players, their lumbering movements, combined with a slowly scrolling camera, hinder the action. These problems make it difficult to see who's under the basket or to gel a quick score off a fast break. The use of fictitious names is also a downer. An announcer keeps pace with the action, but you'll want to turn down the effects volume as the screeching sneakers sound like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard.

Shot Clock Violation

FF '97 is a good idea that comes up short at the buzzer due to its lack of innovative gameplay. But if you still want to light for the top spot in your own tournament, give it a ride for the weekend to satisfy your college hoops urge.

Few collegiate events generate as much excitement and hysteria as college basketball's Final Four tournament, which makes it surprising that this is the first 32-Bit title to re-create the sport.

Shooting for the hard, realistic elements of a true simulation, Mindscape's Final Four basketball delivers a large and diverse selection of 64 teams and the basketball arenas they play in. Also included are 20 of the greatest college teams of all time.

For simulation fans, extensive ratings and statistics on both players and teams ranked in the following categories: free-throw percentage, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, strength and game aptitude.

Graphically. Final Four is reminiscent of NBA Shoot Out. Three-dimensional polygonal players move realistically using any of the 16 different camera angles. Standard in-game moves include the standard fare: blocking, stealing, jumping and turbo. Taking it to the hoop and jamming it is a pleasure with over 35 dunk animations at your disposal.

Don't look for any outrageous baseline lift-offs or massive over-the-top jams, Final Four sticks to realism and gameplay to carry it through.

Long title, cool-looking game. MSA, the newly-formed Mindscape sports team, will be releasing a college basketball sim that might be worthy of comparison to EA's stellar Coach K.

Before we get too excited about the game (a playable version is still a ways off) we should step back and look at what the game is going to offer. Final Four '97 will have all of the Division I teams and the current team stats for each school. Like most sports games now, Final Four '97 has motion-captured players and multiple camera angles, but will add some nice visuals like light-sourcing and lens flares. Another nice addition is the school fight songs and a coaching mode. Pll keep you updated.

The first look at this game does little to change my critical opinion of the title.The graphics still need to be spruced up, as does the playability.The court looks great and so do the player reflections, but these don't amount to a hill of beans without the proper playability. Dream Team Basketball is still a long way from completion, so there's plenty of time to whip it into shape. Wouldn't it be cool if, instead of setting up a forum in which to demolish the other Olympic hopefuls, the developers had invented a number of superhuman teams that the Dream Team had to face off against to help save the world--kinda like when the Globetrotters helped save Gilligan's Island. Now that would be a cool game.