On the heels of its excellent pro basketball game, NBA 2K6, 2K Sports has shipped College Hoops 2K6 for the Xbox and PlayStation 2. College Hoops borrows a lot of the new control features introduced in NBA 2K6, including the revamped isomotion jukes and the shot stick for flexible control over your jukes and the types of shots you attempt. But as in NBA 2K6, the real draw to College Hoops is its artificial intelligence and deep legacy mode for hardcore hoops fans. It's too bad that the visuals and sound in the game just don't measure up to the rest of the package.

College Hoops 2K6 has arrived just in time for college basketball season.

The first thing that longtime players of College Hoops will notice in 2K6 is the brand-new control systems, which were introduced in NBA 2K6. First of all, the new isomotion juke system is now in the series. Instead of using the right analog stick to execute fancy dribble maneuvers, you toggle the right and/or left trigger buttons to put your ball handler into an aggressive stance. Once you do that, jiggling the left analog stick will not only move your player, but it will also execute juke moves. If the ball's in your player's right hand, toggling the stick from right to left will execute a crossover. Do a half circle and he'll wrap the ball around his back instead. As you experiment with the isomotion, you'll find that you can easily chain together moves ranging from jab steps to crossovers, to backspins and more. It's not an easy system to learn for sure, but once you get it down, you'll find that you have a lot of control over how your ball handler moves.

The new shot stick is also included in College Hoops 2K6. Since the juke moves have been switched off of the right analog stick, that part of the controller now serves as another means to shoot the basketball. The interesting thing about the shot stick is that it lets you emote different types of shots. Tap away from the basket from midrange and you can execute a fallaway jumper. Drive the hoop and tap to either side, and your shooter will try a one-handed scoop with either hand. Different types of dunks can also be executed depending on how you move the stick as you drive an open lane--the more agile dunkers can do some spectacular throw-downs. The post game is also made more interesting by the shot stick, as you can execute different types of post moves like spins, drop steps, fallaways, and up-and-unders with a combination of the shot stick and the aggressive modifier. For the faint of heart, the standard shot button still remains, which will allow the computer to select a shot for you as with any other basketball game. But for those of us who want the added control, the shot stick works pretty well once you get the hang of it.

Other new tweaks to the gameplay have also been made, such as the intuitive pull-and-release free-throw mechanism, which works just as well in this game as it did in NBA 2K6. Perhaps more important is the inclusion of a flexible quick menu system called the "coach's clipboard" that pops up at every play stoppage. This great feature lets you quickly make player substitutions, as well as other adjustments to your defense. There are quite a few options made easily available to you, so you can fine-tune when you want to execute presses and traps (your options include always executing your press, never, occasionally, or only after made baskets). There is also quite an array of different presses you can do, ranging from simple half-court traps to a two-two-one zone press. You can also adjust double-team frequencies on certain players, change matchups for man-to-man defenses, and even call out points of emphasis for your players to focus on, like rebounding and ball control. It's a little tough to tell how much effect the points of emphasis have on your players, though.

Hundreds of schools are available in the game, so your alma mater is almost surely available.

On the court, you now have access to up to eight different quickplay calls from the D pad. You can press any direction to execute a play that you've designated from the game's extensive playbook, and you can also toggle the left shoulder or trigger button to call up a second set of four plays from the D pad. There are dozens of plays available, and there are a few different playbooks available depending on the type of offense your school runs, including flex and motion offenses. Only four different quick defenses are available from the D pad, but you can assign these from the usual array of different zone defense types like three-two, two-three matchup, and box-and-one. Traps in this game can be particularly effective, as you can often tie up a ball handler by bringing a quick double-team on him. It's pretty satisfying to generate a lot of turnovers (and thus, easy baskets) by running full-court presses, but you can just as easily get burned by teams that break the press with crisp passing.

The gameplay in College Hoops 2K6 is excellent. Schools seem to run the type of game that they do in real life. You'll see squads like Wisconsin play hard-nosed defense and grind out the shot clock on offense. Other teams like Washington will attempt to run and gun up and down the court and shoot earlier in the shot clock to generate tempo. Opponents will also mix up defenses on you and press at different times to show you different looks. Perhaps most impressive is that teams actually appear to run offenses in the half-court games, so you'll see players moving off the ball and usually in an intelligent manner. It's important to be able to read the type of defense being run on you so you can attack the open spots. Zone-buster plays that overload one side of the floor can be effective against two-three zones. You can also find open spaces to shoot in the corners against three-two zones. The offense/defense chess match is best exemplified in College Hoops' coach mode feature, where you don't take direct control of any players, but instead call out offensive sets and defenses as you watch the computer play for you. For us, it's not as fun to not have control over the game, but the coach mode seems to work pretty well if you're into that sort of thing. Just be sure to load up your quickplay slots with actual plays. If you leave the computer to its own devices, it doesn't seem to run a very efficient offense for you without your guidance.