(CNN) -- College hoops fans will, no doubt, be thrilled to know that 989 Sports's "NCAA Final Four 2000" has arrived for the PlayStation game console. That excitement is likely to dwindle after playing a couple of games of this clunky basketball simulator.

First the good news. The game features more than 300 college teams with some very nicely rendered courts. Player and light reflections can be seen in the floor's shine and the 3D engine pans smoothly with the action. Likewise, the sound effects give the game a terrific college feel, with fight songs, recognizable crowd cheers and the requisite squeaky shoes as the players pivot and run.

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Gameplay is easy enough to pick up, and features all the things we've come to expect in a basketball game, as well as a few new ones. The game allows icon-based passing, easy playcalling options and the ability to play a full season or a 64-team tournament. Options are plentiful with four distinct levels of difficulty including game speed options and several camera angles.

The bad news? It's all for nothing. The toughest part of creating a sports game is getting the "feel" right and NCAA Final Four 2000 doesn't feel anything like basketball. Actually, it plays kind of like aliens picked up the NCAA rule book and tried to create a game based on what they read. All the elements are there, but something's just not right.

Maybe it's the player graphics, which are fuzzy, choppy and downright unflattering. Player movements seem more akin to a hopped-up Pac-Man game, with the ability to run from one end of the court to another in about four seconds, weaving between players like the Tasmanian Devil.

Or maybe it's the poorly implemented "touch shooting" feature. With this option turned on, a small rectangle with a yellow arrow appears every time a human-controlled player takes a shot. Depending on the player's ability and position on the court, an area of the bar will be highlighted in green. As soon as the shot begins, a red bar rises inside the box and, if you release the button while the red bar is inside the green area, you have a very high likelihood of making the shot.

It's not as complicated as it sounds - quite the opposite, actually - but it results in some bizarrely high-scoring games with only the slightest amount of practice. Team shooting percentages of well above 80 percent are easy to achieve which is a good thing, because the computer rarely misses. At higher skill levels, touch shootings swings the other way and becomes impossible, while the computer can sink a shot from nearly anywhere, with nearly any coverage.

It could be the fact that all the teams play pretty much the same, despite the staggering number of them. Every team has different ratings, but you really can’t tell a huge difference among them.

Perhaps the problem is the game's weird ball physics, where rebounds almost always roll around in the rim and suddenly hop way above the backboard, then descend in slow motion. If you play the game, you'll definitely get used to seeing the ball roll around in the rim - whether the shot is successful or not - since about half your shots bounce around like a pinball before deciding which way to go. Luckily, the play-by-play announcer will tell you whether the shot is in or out while the ball is still inside the rim. It's just wrong.

Then there's the play-by-play. It’s likely that you’ve never heard play-by-play as unabashedly lame as Quinn Buckner's weak showing here. The commentary is constant, repetitive, very often wrong and painfully cheesy. Where many sports games today feature two-man commentary that actually adds to the game, this commentary takes a mediocre game and torpedoes it. The first few times you hear some of the entries, you'll wince. After a few games, you'll be ready to fling the disc out of the nearest window. Yes, it's really that bad.

Like most sports games, "NCAA Final Four 2000" improves slightly with multiple players, but the gameplay is so otherworldly that it's only fun if you forget it's supposed to be basketball. It's a lot like the old Konami game "Double Dribble," except it's not fun. "NCAA Final Four 2000" supports the PlayStation's Dual Shock feature, but it seems to buzz more or less at random and doesn't add anything whatsoever to the game.

I suppose it's not all bad, depending on how hard up you are for college basketball and, so far, this is your only option so far this year. Playing a season with your favorite school probably has some appeal for some people, and there might be some fun in playing a tournament.