Graphically, EA’s next venture into the college basketball scene looks great, but it is still nowhere near that of other next-gen NBA titles. It’s not to say that NCAA 07 March Madness isn’t visually stellar. In fact, the arenas and player models do look impressive. However, what strikes me is that the mascots seem to be the most graphically rich characters in the whole game.

On the audio front, you’ll definitely have to do some tweaking of the controls. While the commentary sounds good, you’ll never know it because the crowd volume is not optimized by default. However, once you fix the settings, you’ll then notice that the commentators do sometimes repeat themselves or make mistakes in calling the action, which, if you pay attention to that sort of thing, can sometimes take you out of the action.

NCAA 07 plays fairly well overall, but certainly can use some tweaking. For starters, the fact that the defense can be beat and still step in front of the dribbler and immediately stop him can often get frustrating. I also found that passing can sometimes be a chore when multiple teammates are in the same area. It is not that feasible to manually select them in a fast-break situation, as you can imagine. There also appear to be bugs that manage to be both subtle and blatant, the biggest being that after half-time, the computer team will often inbound the ball without warning and without the players even being set yet, which is quite disorienting.

With that aside, the core of this year’s March Madness is definitely the Dynasty Mode. There’s something about not only playing, but also managing a team from the coach’s shoes. To build up your school’s franchise, you’ll have to not only win ball games, but also keep up with things like training the players between games, and working on recruiting high school players for your college’s future. While I didn't care about such things based on initial impressions, after getting into it, it became quite entertaining to take total control of the franchise.

One new and fairly well-implemented gameplay enhancement is in the Impact Control. As you do well, your Impact Meter will slowly go up. But for every time the opponent one-ups you, you’ll lose a point. Once you have enough spots filled, you’ll be able to perform actions like pumping up the crowd or your teammates. If you manage to put a run together and fill your meter, you’ll also have the chance to perform an Impact Moment move that will greatly enhance your performance and decrease the morale of your opponent. When done at the right time, your team will be able to string together a run that will spur a comeback or ward off the trailing rival.

Some other quibbles with NCAA 07 March Madness include choppy cut-scenes and openings for games and the lack of good presentation. During gameplay replays, the camera is so far from the action that the replays may as well not exist. There’s also the fact that the game features ESPN, but even the special television games that you’ll receive for great play don’t actually have any indication or special events on-screen. It should be said, however, that within the main interface, the ESPN brand is great. You’ll be treated to in-menu and up to the minute sporting news through Xbox Live. You’ll also be able to connect to special audio and video channels that also contain more sporting news.

NCAA 07 March Madness contains different difficulty settings, and for good reason. Unfortunately, the default settings make for an easy game. It may be good for beginners, but anyone used to any recent baller should likely up the difficulty from the start, or you'll end up undefeated, but without your own sense of pride from the accomplishment, as it was for me. Going through a dynasty, the only games that I lost on the default difficulty were those that I simulated to speed up the process. However, in the great number of games that I actually did play, I only had a couple of close games. At a higher difficulty level, it will likely even the odds a bit more for most players.

The control set for NCAA 07 March Madness is fairly stable, although I would have liked to see a bit better control over passing the ball, especially on the inbounds. While you can switch the player who will receive the pass and control him, you cannot just quickly throw a direct pass. Otherwise, the controls are typical and are mapped to the controller well.

NCAA 07 March Madness is definitely a game that’s not without its problems, but for college hoops fans, it should be a pretty good contender. Definitely worth a rent to see if it lives up to the hype, NCAA 07 is a good game with good gameplay that is plagued by a few bugs. Check it out if you’re a fan.