In my opinion, once the football season wraps up, the next best thing in all of sports is college basketball... more specifically, March Madness. Without a doubt, NCAA March Madness 2004 is the best remedy for that college hoops itch. You'll instantly fall in love with the look and feel of the game. All of the animations are dead on: the fade-away jump shots, the ball-saving dives, the one-handed tomahawk jams... all look like the real thing. Each college venue is just as sweet. The crowds react accordingly by getting up to cheer their team on after big plays.

March Madness sounds even better than it looks. Obviously, every school fight song imaginable is included, along with a barrage of pep band music. Plus, the crowds all have their own cheers that you hear during actual games. Not to be forgotten are the commentators, Brad Nessler and Dick Vitale, who call a great game from the opening tip to the final buzzer. Rarely do they ever fall behind the play, and amazingly, Dickie V DOESN'T get annoying. It's the perfect combination of witty banter and over-exuberance.

One of the biggest faults I found from the previous years of the March Madness series was the lack of team offense. Much of it was all based on one-on-one moves. This year, you are really forced into running set plays, along with going one-on-five if necessary. The point is: you have options around you. And you can build your team around the offense you want. Whether you're a perimeter type of coach, or you want to bang it inside, you'll be able to do it all. The great thing is you don't have to go in for a dunk each possession. Players can knock it down from all sides of the court. Don't worry, Phi Slamma Jamma still rules the roost, but again: you have options.

There's an endless amount of game modes to play around with in March Madness 2004. First off, you can create your own school or player, which is always great if you want to upgrade your D3 school to Division One status like me. Once you've finalized all of that, play through an Exhibition game, either in a regular fashion, Rivalry match-up, or in a Mascot game. Believe you me, there's nothing funnier than watching mascots pull off high flying dunks. I recommend being Syracuse, those fat oranges are the best! There's also Online play, only for PS2, which I'll discuss later. You can also set up a Tournament for you and your friends, selecting which teams make the final 64. Plus, there's a Season mode, although who wants to play just one year? That's where the Dynasty mode comes into play. Take your school through 30 years of college basketball drama, recruiting the top prospects from around the country. Of course, I had some pros and cons from this mode.

First, the pros. Throughout the season, you can check stats, records and awards through the Sporting News magazine (much like the Sports Illustrated in NCAA Football 2004). Also, as you progress during the year, you'll earn points for accomplishing certain tests. With those points, you can upgrade either your team or an individual player. This is great if your shooting guard hasn't quite perfected his three-point shot. Now for the cons.

When you're recruiting in the offseason, you have to pitch one of four reasons to attend your school (again, like EA's football counterpart). However, when you check back the following week to see his status, it doesn't tell you why he is or isn't interested. The other little thing I got peeved about was the ranking system. I was undefeated after a few weeks, and so finally I was ranked number one in the country. After keeping my undefeated status going, I was dropped down to ninth the next week. This doesn't happen in real college basketball, and it shouldn't happen here either.

There's also a Practice mode, if you're afraid of getting upset by some small school right away. If you'd like to change the way the game is played, you can always change a multitude of settings, including the game speed. Once all of the settings are to your liking, change the difficulty levels to the one you're most comfortable with. They include Junior Varsity, Varsity, All-Conference and All-American.

As hard as this may be to believe, I swear EA tried to make me not like this game at times. First off, saving is a big pain. Each time you want to save the game, you either need to keep the default name that's given, or retype it in every time! Secondly, game menus are very slow, and simulating through seasons is even slower. This is the problem when you have more than 320 schools on one game. I'm sure things are much quicker on the Xbox, but then again, they don't have the online feature. This is for those of you who wish to take on the world. I warn you to be careful, some of those online gamers can be down right nasty.

I liked what EA did for the controller configuration. This year, there is a layup/dunk button, along with a Pro-Hop/Power Dribble button. These are very useful when running your offense. However, direct passing isn't what it used to be. Now you have to select who you want to pass it to, then you press the pass button. I found I couldn't run as many fast breaks because of this.

There are a couple of hiccups for March Madness 2004, but the pros outweigh the cons. Whether you're all about college basketball, or you just tune in for the NCAA tournament, you need to get this game.