• AWAY Shuffle Dungeon
• Babysitting Mania
• Cooking Mama World Kitchen
• Major Minor's Majestic March
• Marker Man Adventures
• Our House
• Wonder World Amusement Park
• Zoo Hospital

The demo is expected to release on November 20th on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The game will feature the top two teams in the game face off, No. 1 Florida vs. No. 2 Kansas. NCAA March Madness 2007 is expected to release for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox and Xbox 360 in January.

"Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure breaks the mold of the current crop of games by fusing authentic urban culture with truly diverse gameplay," said Marc Metis, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Atari, Inc. "With its unique story, talent, music, and gameplay design, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure answers consumers' call for innovation and originality in gaming."

A limited edition of Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure is also available at select retailers nationwide. The Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure Limited Edition is packed into a collectible Getting Up tin case and in addition to the game, includes Marc Ecko's Blackbook, offering an exclusive look inside the game's development process, a disc featuring a collection of short films, level rundowns, game tips, and "making of" footage, and a silver pen with the Getting Up "X" logo.

]]> Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:22:00 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_ncaa_march_madness_2006_xbox http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_ncaa_march_madness_2006_xbox http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_ncaa_march_madness_2006_xbox# This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

March is a couple of months away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start filling out your brackets now – at least in the virtual world. The college basketball season is almost upon us and that signals the release of EA Sports’ NCAA March Madness 06. Is it Final Four-caliber or does it miss even the play-in game?

It’s ironic that the professional big brother version of this – NBA Live 06 – focuses so much on offensive with its trick stick and freestyle superstar abilities while the college game focuses quite a bit on defense. The newest addition to the series is the lockdown stick.

In most recent basketball games, holding down on the right control stick puts the defensive player in your control in a low stance, allowing you to gain some position on the opposing ballhandler. The new lockdown stick not only does that, but by doing so and following the ballhandler, your defensive player will stick to him like glue, not giving him any room to dribble, pass, etc. While holding the right stick down you can use the right trigger to attempt a steal or use the left trigger to take a charge if your man starts to drive towards the bucket. The downside is that if the offensive guy makes a quick cut, you’ll find yourself way out of position to make a play. You’ll also find yourself committing foul after foul if you abuse the right trigger to steal. Also, make sure the guy you’re using has a decent defensive rating – if he doesn’t then no matter what you do with the lockdown stick, there’s a very good chance you’ll get burned.

What makes this all even better is that you can lockdown on someone who isn’t handling the ball. By doing so, you can eliminate a potential pass option and thus shooting option, or shut down an opponent’s inside game by preventing post-ups and such.

With all the talk about defense, what about the offense? It plays just like NCAA’s and NBA Live’s of old. There’s a button to pass, shoot, and a dedicated button for layups and dunks. There’s also icon-passing, though it’s still cumbersome with the Xbox controller since it’s initiated by the black button. The extra shoulder button on the PS2 controller was made for it, however.

The field general play calling from last year makes its return in 06. By pushing a direction on the d-pad, you can use set plays on offense to make space for an open jump shot, isolate a guard one-on-one, or create mismatches in your favor. The only downside is that you can’t change the plays on the fly or even during a game, thus you’re stuck with whatever six plays on both offense and defense that you chose at the beginning of the game. It’s a huge oversight for strict sim-ers, but for those just looking for a fast paced b-ball game probably won’t think much of it.

In the audio department, NCAA shines. The EA Trax thankfully spares us the usual same old beats and keeps it “college” by having the GSU Marching Band provide the soundtrack, which includes their renditions of classics like “Funkytown” and an original track for EA called “It’s in the Game”.

The announce team of Brad Nessler and Dick Vitale continues the EA basketball trend of fantastic play-calling. They sound very fluid and natural on the mic and best of all their comments are timely and significant. Coach calls time to stop the bleeding, they’ll comment on that it is a good move, or turn the ball over on a boneheaded play and Nessler and Vitale will call out the young man responsible for the boneheaded play.

For all the new additions, deep gameplay options, and other great things, there’s a ton of unpolished blemishes buried beneath. After the aforementioned not being able to change set plays on-the-fly, is the graphics.

The graphics engine, just like the Live series, is starting to show its age. It actually looks a bit better than Live 06 with more fleshed-out characters and no “skating” across the court. But the ball will still magically appear in a player’s hands, and the crowd – don’t get me started on the crowd. The stadiums look darn nice and pretty accurate, but the people that fill the seats are simply horrid. All they are is pixilated 2-D sprites that look like that came straight out of Madden ’94 – on the Super Nintendo. You wouldn’t think it’d be so bad because it’s just the crowd, but you see so many shots of them in replays and such that it does make you cringe every so often.

The dynasty mode, while sufficient, contains a few bad spots that won’t kill the gameplay, but will have some people screaming in frustration. First is the sheer number of NCAA violations you’ll run into during your dynasty term. I know college players aren’t perfect and not every violation is made public, but geez, if college programs these days deal with the number of violations and warnings your school gets in March Madness 06, I don’t know how they go out each night and play with a full roster.

And having a full roster is quite a bother. It’s stuck at 12 players and that’s it, when in real-life they carry a number of scholarship players and walk-ons, whose total number does exceed 12. I don’t get, fans won’t get it. Why lock the rosters at just 12 especially when injuries begin to mount?

Another huge blemish is the inexplicable drop in a player’s stats. One year your player of the year will be at a 96 rating then come back in the off-season rated at 83. Sometimes the drop-off is even worse. Now, it wouldn’t be as infuriating had they told you why the rating dropped like the player didn’t workout hard during the time off or he changed his diet and it affected his physique, game, etc. But, no, no reason is ever given for why your MVP is now just mediocre. I realize skill and potential fluctuate greatly in the college game, but it is ridiculous here.

At least there is an online mode to alleviate the headache of some of the single-player stuff. Unfortunately, at the time of this review, there weren’t many people online playing March Madness, so how much fun you get out of it depends on who you find online. Maybe everyone is waiting for March to actually roll around before loading this up.

The new lockdown stick makes defense in a basketball game fun again, and the return of the field general play calling easily make this feel like you’re playing a true college basketball game. Despite some of the horrid blemishes that make this feel like a somewhat incomplete game, NCAA March Madness is still a decent college basketball title. Just be warned that the game is far from perfect in other aspects besides the gameplay.

Addition of lockdown stick makes what already feels like true college basketball game better.

Engine is showing its age; the crowd is just ugly.

Announce team is fantastic; college themed soundtrack fits & welcome departure from other Trax.

College basketball fans will love that it plays like the real game.

Because the dynasty mode is kid of bad, where replay comes from, this score takes a big hit.

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