A story of great potential but only average return. 2K6 is a good basketball experience, but lacking in fundamentals.
The game offers an excellent variety of different types of game play, allowing the user to play anything from a pick up game to enjoying a long career as a coach. I found the legacy component to be much better then that of any of the competition. It seems to allow the user to flow through the seasons fairly easily and gives the option of playing the games or just marching through to the games you want to play.
The only small issue is with the recruiting. Although it is very important and provides for a more personal game experience, it seems to become more of a unwanted chore by the time a few seasons have gone by. Some automation here would pick up the pace where the manual scanning of recruits slows down gameplay to a crawl at points. Also in the area of recruiting, I found the camps portion to be a waste of time, it only served to further bog down the progress of the season.
The components of gameplay are much better then most, with a great ability to change and tweak strategy. The camera angles are great and I never had a problem feeling like I could see all of the action. Action is the games strongest point. The game really puts you on the court and moves at a clip you would expect . Nothing feels rushed and just about any setting you could think of from defensive pressure to individual player matchups can be adjusted.
The graphics and sound for the game are good, but still only average for what is commonly out there for the Xbox. I was surprised to see that there had been no improvement since College Hoops 2K6 (maybe even slightly worse). The music and fightsong cholces seemed to be less then previous versions. Graphics and sound are areas that did not even come close to the competition.
Finally, it seems like this game is plagued with occasional lockups. Something I experienced multiple times in the 2K5 version and had hoped was a thing of the past. The lockups are not frequent, but considering that you might be playing #10 in the country and winning with just 2 minutes to go when it happens, it can still be extremely frustrating. I hope the developer spends some time fixing this reoccurring problem in the next version.
Overall, College Hoops 2K6 is a very entertaining game and one that I think most college basketball fans would enjoy. The variety of gameplay keeps the game fresh for a long time. The developer has done an excellent job of mastering many of the components of the college basketball experience. I only wish a little more time had been spent in the fundamentals of the game.