The following is a feature article written by guest contributor The X from the NLSC Forum. It takes a look back at College Hoops 2K8 by 2K Sports, a favourite of many who play college basketball video games. We hope you enjoy it, thanks again to The X for the article!

Every few years a basketball game comes along that inevitably captures the imagination of gamers and changes the landscape on which all future basketball titles are compared. For me, it's been something like this: NBA Jam, NBA Live 95, NBA Live 98, NBA Live 2005, NBA 2K7 and most recently College Hoops 2K8.

As a precursor to 2K8, I picked up College Hoops 2K7 shortly after picking up my PS3 and have some fond memories, like stinking it up with the Northern Colorado Bears in my Legacy to beating Sit almost single-handedly with a freakish freshmen named Kevin Durant against a beastly Florida team (Al Horford, Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer and Taurean Green) that had just won back-to-back titles. Unfortunately this game suffered from some frame rate issues, most notably when playing in packed arenas. Overall, whilst a reasonably good game, it seemed to lack a little bit of polish and didn't truly captured the college basketball experience.

This is where College Hoops 2K8 enters. Before I discuss what I liked about the game, I'll be the first to admit that the graphics were very dated and I wasn't a huge fan of the commentary. The game also had its share of bugs, which unfortunately seems to be the norm these days for sporting titles. Fortunately the guys at 2K immediately went to work on what must've been the best patches I have seen put in a basketball game. The patch would fix up almost all of those nagging little issues that were preventing it from being a great game.

Just when it seemed like it couldn't get any better for us college basketball junkies, sobering news surfaced that signalled the end of the College Hoops 2K series. 2K Sports had pulled out of negotiations with the CLC and there would be no College Hoops 2K9. My heart immediately sunk upon hearing this news, knowing how good this series was and how much it could still improve. At this point I must give full credit to the College Hoops 2K8 development team as they went ahead and released the patch after they were shut down.

If anything, the fact the series died might have invigorated its hardcore fan base to keep this title alive, much like what has happened with NFL 2K5. Even two years later, the game still has its passionate followers, some of whom are currently working on 2009/10 rosters. Personally, I don't want to even imagine how long it would take to do rosters for the 330+ teams that are in the game, but as a community, they get it done. The game is also getting more life of late now that NBA 2K10 has editable draft classes as fans are wanting to get their favourite College Hoops 2K8 prospects across into NBA 2K10.

So what did College Hoops 2K8 do right that separated it from the pack?

GAMEPLAY

How would I describe College Hoops 2K8's gameplay? I'd say it's similar to the NBA 2K games, but also distinctly different. The isomotion controls seem to be scaled back a lot and players are justifiably not as skilled as their NBA counterpaths. This will likely cause problems for the people that like to go one-on-one with Kobe and Lebron in NBA 2K, but for people that like to beat a team with a backdoor cut or prefer to swing the ball to the weakside to the open man for the trifecta, then this was the game for you.

When playing this game, I could more easily associate with the college game than its NBA predecessors as it felt more like the real basketball that you and I would play socially and competitively. I like that not every guy on the team can throw down reverse dunks and outside of the athletic freaks most will just take the easy lay-up on the fastbreak. I like that some teams play with four guards and one forward for the sole reason that it allows them the best chance to win games. One thing that I noticed was that the CPU AI would seemingly adjust its approach based on what I was doing and throw different looks at me. At times it seemed like a mini game of chess, but then again, maybe I was just imagining that.

I liked how teams would play to their styles and to their strengths. If you play UNC, then get ready for a track meet, whereas Duke and UCLA were more methodical in their approach. A team like Princeton will just slow it right down and use the whole shot clock every time down the court. Finally I can tell you from experience that going into Missouri was definitely forty minutes of hell. If you played to other team's strengths then you would often or not end up on the wrong side of a big loss.

Moving onto the playbooks, there is a lot of what you would expect from the college game, namely a lot of Motion offences, plus others such as Princeton, Flex and more. It's always nice when the play you call ends up in a basket, but I prefer this game's defensive schemes. If you change up your defence in College Hoops 2K8, it has a tangible effect on the game as every defence is succinctly different. There is every different sort of zone defence that you could hope for. If you want to run a box and one or triangle and two, then it's just a simple on-the-fly switch. If you want to do full court 2-1-2 press, then I hope you have the personnel to pull it off.

In my Syracuse legacy I would often run a 1-3-1 zone defence (Jim Boeheim wouldn't have been happy since I'm pretty sure he's a 2-3 guy). The one great thing about the zone defences in this game is that it lets you substitute players to different positions in the zone. If I wanted my SF Donte Greene causing havoc out front with his big wingspan, rather than sub Greene to PG which would throw out the team dynamics, all I had you was go to a zone substitution screen and switch SF with PG. This is a nice little coaching feature as it allows you to hide your team's worst defenders. Furthermore, the game gives you the ability to set up your team to press all the time, occasionally, when needed (late game), only after made baskets or never. I can't imagine any sim basketball gamer that would not want this sort of customisation in every basketball title. Whether most people use these coaching options or not is irrelevant, the fact it's there for those who will use it is what it is about.

Finally, player experience and team unity also played a factor in how games played out. For example, if you play with a team of freshmen then they are a lot more likely to make unforced errors when under pressure. In my first year of my Syracuse legacy, I thought I was dancing to a Sweet 16 date with UNC. I had been under the impression that my round of 32 matchup against number 15 seed UC-Irvine would be easy despite them having upset West Virginia in the first round. I was pleasantly surprised when the Anteaters used their senior-laden line-up to frustrate and completely outplay my young and inconsistent team. Now that's basketball. Good talent alone won't beat good teams.

Overall, gameplay delivered a solid experience that had a college feel to it. It wasn't perfect and you could at times read what the AI was doing before they did it, but it provided a solid foundation. However it would be the extraordinarily deep legacy mode that would make this game.

LEGACY MODE

College Hoops 2K8 allowed you two different types of legacy, open or closed. A closed legacy let you choose any team and run with it. An open legacy would only let you choose to be the coach of the minnows of Division 1 college basketball, whether it be Northern Colorado or Texas State, and move through the ranks. As you were successful at each level (easier said than done with the talent or lack thereof to work with), you might get job offers from a mid major like Santa Clara or if you really impress, you might replace retiring Wildcats' coach Lute Olsen. Sometimes it is better to stay at a small school for an extra season or two and get them to back-to-back conference titles rather than bolting for the first offer outside of Dodge. So there was definitely some strategy involved.

The depth of legacy mode is too much to break down in detail, but here are some of the aspects that I thought really worked well.

1. Recruiting
   
   
   
   
   • Depth and Realism – you can recruit by prospect rating (one to five star), region (municipal, district, state, region & even international). You are given scouting points to use each week and you can make weekly calls, e-mails to prospects, as well as scouting their games, inviting them to campus and visiting them at their homes. Each prospect has different priorities, like staying close to home, playing for a big program, getting lots of playing time, playing for a good coach and so on. So if you are a mid-major then you may as well give up on getting a player whose number one priority is playing for a big program. Whereas if you have two shooting guards on your roster and both are seniors, then a prospect shooting guard who wants to get lots of playing time might find your school's situation more attractive. All of these elements really added to the legacy mode. Recruiting is your school's lifeline and frankly, I never found it that easy, especially when working with smaller schools. Sometimes if you went hard for one or two players and you missed out on them, and you don't have backup options, then you'd be left high and dry with no good recruits coming in.
     
     
   • ABL – this was the game's equivalent of the high school AAU circuit. You could literally go in and play any game you wanted with any recruit you wanted. It allowed you to find diamonds in the rough and not recruit guys that you didn't like the feel of. Even if you were a lowly school in the Sun Belt Conference, it didn't stop you from going in and playing with the number one prospect in the nation. Realistically, if you're in the Sun Belt, that's as close as you will get to them, but it's good to play with some of the All-Americans just to know who the new stars coming through are going to be. This is even more so if you are importing the draft classes to NBA 2K8.
     
     
   • Create-A-Recruit – it's very easy to create high school recruits. I created myself and a couple of others. It's always nice (and a little frustrating at the same time) to see your virtual self who is born in Syracuse, NY decide to sign with the Virginia Tech Hokies over his hometown Orange as his priorities meant he wanted minutes and the Hokies only had one SG on the roster, a returning senior, which means my virtual self seemed to be a guaranteed starter at SG by his sophomore season.
     
     
   • Scheduling – first off, the game had the real life 2007/08 schedules in it. However, as you run the program now, you have the power to set your own schedules. If you want to be like Duke and set powder puff games to pad your record then so be it. Alternatively, if you want to go the Arizona route and play a tougher schedule then all the power to you. Remember that strength of schedule (along with your RPI) plays a very important role in getting you to the Big Dance and your tournament seeding. You can also schedule yourself to play in non-conference tournaments such as Coaches vs. Cancer and Pre-season NIT.
     
     
   • More realistic injuries and statistics – during the first year of my Syracuse legacy, I'm facing up against Georgetown and I notice they are without one of their stars, Patrick Ewing Jr. It appears he got injured early in the season with a broken patella (ouch!) and he's become a medical redshirt, so he gets an additional year of eligibility! Simmed statistics, whilst not great, do seem relatively good when compared to other basketball titles, even if there are too many upsets by small schools and mid-majors over power conference teams on their home courts.
     
     
   • Selection Sunday/Weekly Recap Shows/Presentation – having worked so hard during the season, as you would in real life, you now have to sweat it out on Selection Sunday. If you are a bubble team, this can be an especially painful wait to see whether your team is selected. Even if you're secured a high seed, you still want to see what region you end up in and how easy (or hard) your road to the Final Four is. Then there is the pre-season and post-season wrap up shows that tell you pre-season and post-season top 25's All-American teams and much more. There are weekly wrap up shows that tell you the previous week's best games and performances, as well as this coming week's best games and the current AP Top 25 teams. The immersion factor that these shows add can not be understated as it allows you to learn more about other teams in your legacy.
     
     
   • Coaching Options – if you want to set practice midweek to work on your team's ball handling prior to facing Louisville's full court press, no problem, it can be done. You can even set weekly training schedules for every single player on your roster. If you've got a rail thin freshman centre riding the pine, get him working on his strength and defensive rebounding.
     
     
   • Bucket Loads of Information – you can look at player stats and team stats for all 330+ Division 1 school, as well as team standings, player awards for all conferences. You can look at Nicholls State and see who their coach is, what his lifetime win-loss record is, what offence and defence he runs, the capacity of their home stadium, what their average attendance is as a percentage of capacity (yes, you'll see lots of empty seats), their mascot, what their student section is called, when was their last NCAA Tournament berth was and what their current roster is made of and the team unity (experience that they have). There is probably more information, but it's just ridiculous the amount that they've managed to include in this legacy mode that still make it playable years later.
     
     
   • That feeling of accomplishment – there is something special that can be said about doing what I did, taking a struggling young Syracuse team led by freshmen Jonny Flynn and Donte Green from an unranked, bubble team at 17-12 (8-10 in conference play and the number 9 seed in the Big East Tournament) to go all the way to the Big East Conference Finals and move off the bubble with a 20-13 record and some quality RPI wins. What about taking a small school on the road into the ACC heartland and playing the number 1 team in the nation like UNC on their home court, playing them tough and almost beating them?