From the opening tip, literally, Final Four looks like a second-rate basketball game. No matter where you play, whether it's Comcast Center (home of the Terps) or the Carrier Dome (Syracuse), the opening intro looks like it's staged in a high school gymnasium. The shots are very close to the court so instead of seeing swarms of people in a huge venue you see a close-up of a few cheerleaders and a poorly rendered mascot. The few long range shots offer only a blur of color and lack any of the personality you'd enjoy watching real games in some of the truly historic arenas around the country.

Unfortunately, it just gets worse when the game starts. Sometimes your players respond quickly to your button presses, sometimes they don't. Defenders have trouble realizing which way to face when guarding the man with the ball even when there aren't other players around to confuse them. And when you have the ball, who knows what will happen when you push the "shoot" button. Sometimes you'll see a smoothly animated jump shot or lay-up. Sometimes he'll move jerkily from a walking/running animation, stop dead in his tracks, then take the bunny shot. Sometimes he'll slam down a monster dunk, but only when you hold the turbo button, and even then it's hard to predict what's going to happen. Sometimes he won't do a thing – he'll just stand there looking at the defender. The only command that seemed to be working correctly most of the time was pass.

Stealing and fouls continue the mystery. Because of the jerky controls when you try to move around the court, it's next to impossible to match up with a player and play defense. Attempting a steal usually results in absolutely nothing happening – players don't have much trouble ignoring it when they've got the ball. But you don't have to be going for a steal or block to get called. Just trying to stay with the ball handler will get you called. Ironically, when I tried to commit a foul I couldn't make it happen – I just got burned. Clean plays and fouls look exactly the same in the jumbled mess of bodies on the court. Computer players, however, have a much higher success rate of stealing the ball. It's too bad that when it happens you can't really see what they did. Your best bet is to switch defenders as often as possible and hope for the computer to miss his shot. Some of these issues, like fouls, can be addressed with sliders but the default is so far off that the sliders don't help much.

All of this adds up to total confusion. The very basics of the game are so weak that all the extra control options just don't matter. There are several ways to set up your offense, you can move the ball around with icon passing and there are even distinct post and perimeter moves. But if you can't run, shoot, and defend in the most basic sense, none of these other features amount to much.

While you're fighting with the controller, desperately trying to get the players on screen to do what you want them to, you're treated to blocky, clippy player models that spaz and sputter all over the court. Computer controlled players move around better, but your players go from sprinting to lolly-gagging at all the wrong times. And the visual details just aren't there – it's difficult to see what's going on when individual players react with one another. Final Four looks like an old, choppy version of NBA Jam, but without any of the personality or charm.

For those who tire of hearing announcers repeat themselves over the course of a season or dynasty in a sports game, be glad you have something to complain about. Announcing in Final Four is almost non-existent, with comments coming at the beginning of the game but not during. The silence is deafening. The best thing that can be said about the audio in Final Four is that it doesn't involve Dick Vitale.

You can choose Season mode to play through a year with your favorite team in hopes of going to the big dance. There's also dynasty, which includes off season losses to the pros and recruiting. It's not a bad structure – recruiting is divided up into region and session and you've only got so much time to spend on a certain number of players. But the menu screens are so sparse and hard to read that the whole thing becomes a chore.

A welcome feature of Final Four is Career mode, in which you start off with a lowly job at a small school but slowly move your way up as positions at the big schools open up. The obvious problem is that advancement in this or Dynasty mode hinges on your interest in playing through multiple seasons of the gameplay mentioned above. Even the Create-A-Player feature that lets you assign all but one score in the mid 90s won't keep this fresh.

As usual in sports games, playing against real people can make or break the experience. In this case, it makes the dunks a lot more fun and the inability to play anything resembling competent basketball something to laugh about instead of frustrating – at least it happens to both of you. But the novelty wears off pretty quickly. And that's a shame because Final Four is playable online via broadband or dial-up if you have the Playstation 2's add-on network adapter. If you're interested you can set up tournaments and leagues, get roster updates, track stats and use the message boards.

There are many more games of each sport produced every year than are necessary. The good ones, even if they aren't at the top of the sales charts, have their die hard fans and the games stick around, improving incrementally each year. The bad ones apparently have fans, too, because games keep coming out of studios like 989 even though they don't seem to even be trying to compete with the big boys like March Madness and ESPN College Hoops. In this case, there's simply no reason Final Four should be on the short list for college basketball fans this year. There are only two other college basketball games available this season – and that would have been plenty.