NBA 06 Updated Hands-On

The folks at SCEA Sports Studio have been working hard over the summer to bring an entirely new NBA game to stores this October. But the upcoming hoops effort, NBA 06, will in some ways be a dramatic departure from what you may be used to in a basketball game. We had a chance to sit down with producers of NBA 06, and got our hands on an alpha build to see how NBA's story mode and gameplay features have changed since our last look at the game back in May.

If you're familiar with the development path NBA 06 has taken so far, you've undoubtedly heard about "The Life," the moniker given to 06's involving story-driven main mode. While we've known about the general plotline of this mode for several months now--a rookie is drafted into the NBA as an upstart point guard, only to lead his team to victory over the course of one magical season--we've only just now seen some of the tangible details of how that story will unfold. In our demo time we got to see a number of choice cutscenes from the drama that will percolate throughout this fictional season--from CG-driven cutscenes that introduce the main players in the NBA 06 world to load "scenes" (as opposed to load screens) that provide you further details on a particular upcoming challenge in this mode.

The cutscenes we saw in the demo were played out several key moments from the beginning of the game. One such cutscene included NBA Draft night, where your created protagonist is anxiously waiting in a hotel room, watching the television for word of when he will be picked up. The dream of being a first-round pick in the Draft has slipped through his fingers, and now he's worried about when or if he'll be picked up at all. Rest assured, your created baller will find a place on a team in the second round and, lo and behold, the team will be whatever club you indicated as your favorite in your profile. Later on, we watched one particularly enjoyable cutscene that showed an argument between the head coach of your team and the antagonist in the game--who just happens to be the team's first-round pick--as he is demoted to the second team, giving your created player the opportunity to run the first stringers on the court. The dialogue and voice acting in this scene was snappy and realistic, as the player and coach traded insults like PJ Carlesimo and Latrell Sprewell would if they were locked in an elevator together.

The first part of the story-driven mode will act as a setup for the plot in the game and as a tutorial to get you used to the game's controls. As such, you'll be taking part in various minigames designed to test your essential point guard skills--speed, shooting, and passing. The first minigame we saw resembled the All-Star Skills challenge found in the PSP version of the game, which was an obstacle course on the court that had you weaving your player through cardboard opponent stand-ins, making bounce passes through targets, and shooting the ball from different points. Naturally, your player is a rookie, so your skills will be at their lowest point. But the further you get in this mode, the more your attributes improve. To keep things challenging as you progress, it's safe to say the nature of the drills, minigames, and crunch-time scenarios will ramp up accordingly.

When it comes to the drills toward the beginning of the game, you'll be expected to pass them in order to advance to the next stage of the story. Not all of the challenges in this mode are strictly pass/fail situations, however. With crunch-time scenarios, you'll have multiple goals to accomplish in the game--some will be team-based, some will be player-centric. How many of these goals you check off at the end of the scenario will affect not only how your player progresses, but also how your team reacts to your protagonist in this mode.

One of the more interesting aspects we're just learning about in NBA 06's "The Life" mode is the concept of showtime goals. As the name implies, showtime goals are those that serve to further your created player's career--the sick dunks and no-look passes that make the crowds cheer and the player agents demand contract renegotiations. Each crunch-time scenario found in the game will include team and player goals, and as the scenario continues you'll know exactly how you're progressing toward each through the use of a showtime meter. While the meter wasn't implemented in the build we played today, we got an idea of how it will work: The showtime indicator will be placed just above the score and game information at the bottom of the screen, and it will include separate "meters" for both your team- and player-centric goal performances. Depending on the types of moves you pull off on the floor, one or both of these meters will fill up (or deplete depending on your success rate). If the player meter fills up enough, your player will receive a speed or endurance boost; fill up the team meter and you'll get a defensive awareness or shooting bonus. What's interesting is that these attribute jumps will last until either the end of the quarter or, in multiplayer matches, until your opponent calls a time-out, finally offering players a reason to use the time-out option for something other than substitutions.

Since our last look at the game at E3, the development team has added a bunch of new minigames to the NBA 06 feature list. We got our hands on drills such as clean up (which challenges you to make baskets with balls found all over the court, and you can't continue on to the next shot until you've drained your current shot); a post-up minigame where you want to control the space underneath the basket; a free throw challenge that introduces the slightly altered FT mechanic in NBA 06; and "shout out," where you follow the audio instructions of your coach and make baskets according to his call. Currently four of these minigames will be playable online, but the team is investigating getting more of them ready for networked play.

One of the more interesting aspects of NBA 06's on-court presentation was how different it sounds from the broadcast approach found in other hoops games. There won't be any play-by-play or color commentator in NBA 06. Instead, the sounds of the court, the roar of the crowd, the ongoing chatter from the players on the hardwood, the squeak of the shoes on the court--all of these sounds are much more prevalent. The idea, according to one NBA 06 producer is to provide a sort of first-person "you are there" feel while playing in a third-person perspective. Also, because many crunch-time scenarios will drop you in the middle of a game with plenty of context provided via cutscenes and loading screen text, you'll always know exactly what's on the line at any given moment.

While all the features planned for the game are currently in the latest build, there's still a good deal of polish to apply to NBA 06 before its October release. The folks at SCEA Sports Studio plan on doing just that over the coming months, and we look forward to seeing the fruits of that labor as we get closer to the game's release.