IGN: Preview

[lawcutta]

IGN have a little preview of CH2k8. http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/830/830175p1.html

[OSUBuckfan07]

thanks for this

[capp34]

post the article site blocked at work. it will be appreciated

[ProphetHo]

ollege Hoops 2K8 First Look
Think you can win? Not in our house!
by Jeff Haynes

October 24, 2007 - We're still two weeks away from the start of college basketball season, but you can feel the change in the air on college campuses around the country: students are getting ready to cram themselves into arenas, paint their bodies and rock the stands till the floors vibrate for their favorite teams. The faithful know that their every cheer could give the guys on the court that extra edge to win a game, cause an upset, and eventually propel their alma mater to the Big Dance. Capitalizing on this swelling of school spirit, 2K Sports will soon release their latest installment of their college basketball franchise, College Hoops 2K8, and this year, the fans in the stands have a larger role than ever before.

2K8 introduces the concept of the 6th Man Advantage, which revolves around the home crowd lending a brand new meaning to the term "Home Court Advantage." Ever seen the Cameron Crazies tear the roof off Cameron Indoor Stadium? Hear Rupp Arena erupt after the Big K cheer? Felt LSU make the stands vibrate in the Maravich center? If you've ever been in the building of your favorite team's arena, you know how insane the vibe can be. 6th Man is seeking to replicate this feeling, with the crowd getting amped by great play for the home team, such as blocks, steals and monster jams. If you manage to completely boost the home crowd for long enough, their energy will bolster your team's confidence and energy levels, making shots much easier to knock down. You can extend these effects by continuing to make great offensive and defensive plays, but you have to be careful - one turnover or foul can potentially decrease the crowd's enthusiasm significantly.

The 6th Man Advantage are just the tip of the iceberg with the number of changes that have been implemented in this year's title. If you played last year's game, you might have been somewhat disappointed with some of the passing mechanics, which weren't necessarily as direct or as strong as you might need during some plays. This year, College Hoops 2K8 introduces Maximum Passing, which will allow players to perform a variety of passes based on the face buttons of your controller. By holding the L1 or Left Bumper on your controller, you can select anything from bounce passes to lobs and chest passes to another teammate from the ball handler. Each will have their own level of strength and their own level of control as well, giving you much more control over making those tight passes into the post or those kick out tosses to the perimeter. College Hoops also borrows a large amount of NBA 2K8 mechanics, such as lock on defense to pin down ball handlers and range indicators to highlight the success a player might have from a certain spot on the court when they shoot the ball.

Of course, you're not simply going to be pulling out three pointers or running up and down the court on fast breaks during the entire game. Running plays and adjusting to offensive and defensive sets are key to your success. College Hoops 2K8 will feature the PlayVision feature from this year's NBA 2K8, allowing novices to see exactly where they need to position their guards or forwards to successfully run a specific offense. There will be 100 separate offensive and defensive plays included in the title that you can run, but if you don't like any of these, you can also try the brand new Play Designer feature to create your own half court sets on both offense and defense. Here, you can set everything from pick and rolls to zones and even how long a point guard will hold the ball before starting the assigned play. The only limitations on the number of steps you include are the remaining seconds on the shot clock, so you can make things as complex or simple as you want, and even test these out in a practice gym against opposing teams to check their effectiveness on the court.

Even offcourt play has been adjusted in this year's version of the game. Before the game, you'll see your players run out of their locker room fired up to take the court from their pep talk. During halftime however, you'll now see a new mechanic for halftime adjustments from your coach, who will break down what you've been doing right and wrong during the game and give you a chance to fix these problems. For instance, you might find that some player is getting too many shots in the low post, or your press defense isn't working the way you want it to. Effectively fixing these can possibly give you an edge in the second half and give you a chance to win the game. However, these adjustments will also be commented on by the new sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson, who replaces Bonnie Bernstein this year. It's a nice inclusion, and there will be hundreds of different things that Tracy will be able to say during her reports on what you've changed and not changed.

All of the changes haven't solely been made on the court either. Recognizing that some players might be daunted by the complexity of the game, College Hoops 2K8 gives you the option to run through a new tutorial mode of your own choosing. You select the move you want to see, and the game will run through it before giving you the opportunity to test your skills. Obviously, beginners will want to check this feature out, but even experienced College Hoops players will want to run through the All American Training sessions. This separate mode is packed with a ton of brand new drills, such as suicides, line and shooting drills, and ball handling tests that you would run into during practices. Not only will you gain points and medals for accomplishing these tasks within a specific amount of time, but you'll also be able to test yourself against actual players, such as Greg Oden, Glen Davis or Mike Conley in some drills.

Legacy mode has been radically redone as well, with a brand new and much larger emphasis on recruiting this year around. Taking a page from the AAU, College Hoops 2K8 introduces the ABL or Amateur Basketball Leagues. The 1500 or so prospective recruits from high schools for a school year will be broken up onto 128 different teams, which are further broken up into different regions. Instead of having to check out high school games where that player will obviously dominate their competition, coaches can check their skills against other similarly talented players to make an informed evaluation. What's more, since these teams will eventually play for a national championship of their own, you get a sense as to whether or not that recruit that you've been keeping your eye on has been contributing to their squad's success, which could translate into production for your team.

Unlike other dynasty modes, it actually pays to play through these games, as you gain a lot more information on the strengths and weaknesses of these players. In fact, the stats of players are completely locked this time around, and only by the strength of your coach's scouting stats will you unlock information on features such as their shooting or defense. What's more, instead of subtracting from your standard pool of recruiting points, you gain bonus points for playing these ABL league games, which can then be used as additional points to strengthen your recruiting packages, such as scholarships or playing time. This gives you much more of a stake in the development of your team, as it requires more time investment, but also provides additional benefits.

The same can be said for the development of your squad during your practice sessions. Of course, team unity returns and is key to your success, but coaches can focus more attention on the individual regiment of players and the overall team playing style to suit the way they want their squad to behave on the court. For instance, if you only want your centers to be bruising low post specialists, you can sink all of their development time into weightlifting and endurance training for the entire season. This year, however, the development process will involve an RPG twist as stats can even be broken down into halves during regiments (representing the fact that you're in process of improving a specific rating as opposed to automatically gaining a full number). That, coupled with a color scheme (Green means a player's good at a stat, while Red indicates a weakness) should give players a quick glance at elements to focus upon. Finally, you can run two drills from the All American Training mode per week to further strengthen specific players in certain skills, so boosting your stars should be no problem in this year's title.


Three new squads have been added to this year's game: Cal State-Bakersfield as well as South Carolina Upstate and Florida Gulf Coast, which rounds out the total number of squads at 339. They'll be able to play on close to 400 different courts, including completely remodeled arenas as well as pre-season and post-season floors. Crowds have been redone as well, with new animations for fans, mascots and cheerleaders, who also receive new tumbles. There will be plenty of new chants for schools to represent their school spirit with, and tons of attention paid to player's faces this year. In fact, the development team spent a ton of time with their FaceGen system to ensure that faces not only look better, but that you won't see similar faces on opposing teams.

Fans will also be psyched to know that online hasn't been left out in the cold this year either. Players will still be able to jump into leagues and 64 team tournaments, but perhaps the largest addition to this year's game will be what's known as 2K Share. Players will be able to upload just about everything from their personal game to the servers: Playbooks they've created, chants, recruits or Legacy Files. Not only can other players download these files to their game, they can rate them for how good or accurate they happen to be.

[lawcutta]

The 1500 or so prospective recruits from high schools for a school year will be broken up onto 128 different teams, which are further broken up into different regions. Instead of having to check out high school games where that player will obviously dominate their competition, coaches can check their skills against other similarly talented players to make an informed evaluation.

This is the part I love. My season is going to be twice as long. I gotta hit the recruiting trail and find talent. lol

[ProphetHo]

oflline sounds great too bad i only play online...

[IBBALLIN33]

I will play offlline if my connection crashes, or if I want to try out new teams and strategies

[KnicksFan4Life]

NBA 2k for online....Ch2k for offline. Dynasty mode is 2 good!

[IBBALLIN33]

I just cannot wait