Beside's gaming another thing I like to do is watch professional sports, and obviously Basketball is in that mix. To be honest their is really only one other basketball game that I owned and that was NBA Live 2003 for the Nintendo Gamecube by EA I loved this game their were many hours I had logged into this game and this was one of the best games I probably have played from EA since, sure It was definitely much different from basketball games now but, it was simple and easy to pick up to play and it was just so much fun. so would 2K change my mind on who made the best basketball game well lets find out.
Presentation: What a job 2K did with this one, this is the best looking basketball game to date and probably the best looking sports game to date, and I would even go further then that, and say one of the best looking games to date. Every single player in the game looks just like they should and their perfect down to every last detail, and even after they show you the close up of the players, and you our playing the actual game with all the players on the court, it still looks unbelievable. One thing that 2K did so well with the presentation too is that after every player, has a certain thing they do to interact with the game around them, EA could learn a lesson from them, look at their latest installment of Madden, but that's for another review. One thing that bothered me with the presentation is the constant advertising, look I get that games like these cost a lot of money to make and advertising would lower some of those cost's so they could make the game better, but jeez the Sprint halftime report is annoying every time it comes after halftime, and even the announcer mentions Gatorade, and not only that but they start talking about how good it is for a good one minute, like I said I get why they needed these advertisements, but is it really necessary during the ball game to constantly here the announcers talk about Gatorade and not about the game itself. That's another thing I wanted to bring up also the announcers in this game our good when it comes to transitioning into different parts of speaking it feels real and not just like a recording, but my big gripe with the announcers is the constant same things they say every single game and especially if you our playing with the same team over and over again, it's basically the same thing they say game after game, and I feel like they could of been more creative with what they had to say with these announcers. The soundtrack isn't bad in this one but it only caters to very few people and I wish they would have made a more divergent soundtrack. When it comes to presentation 2K did a pretty good job, but their our a lot of things I hope they change in the future.
Gameplay: Gameplay is what you would expect it to be obviously basketball, and certain modes that go along with it but first I want to talk about the actual basketball aspect to the game and then I will talk about the actual modes to the game. First off I wanted to mention that since my only experience of a basketball game was NBA Live 2003 the game was very simple and easy to control you had one button to shoot lay it up and dunk it, and same with doing certain tricks which consisted of using the c stick. On this one it's basically the same thing except it's way more complex you have to be really specific with what you want to do, and their is so many things you can do with it, and sure maybe this is a good thing but it can be so hard to figure out every single move, and while I do miss the simplicity of what old basketball games used to play like, this is still a decent addition to make it have more depth. Most of the basketball in the game on offense is not only the way you drive the ball and pass it but also how good of a shot you take and how well you take it, this is a good feature but the thing that makes me mad, is even when you get an A+ and an excellent on your jump shot, you still can sometimes miss, that makes no sense, I wish that they would at least lie and give you an A- then it would at least mean your shot wasn't perfect and you didn't miss. That brings me to another part of the game, when you are shooting free throws, and you have been making them for a long streak, you will end up missing some even if you get a good grade for it, this makes sense I get that even the best free throw shooters have to miss sometimes, but the thing that pisses me off so much is that you can miss on a A- shot, that's utter complete crap! your telling me that I was nearly perfect on the shot and I missed, an A in general should be good enough to make the shot every time, I understand that maybe lower then that shouldn't but near perfect shots should. The defensive side of basketball in this game is pretty much perfect besides a flaw I will get to in just a moment. First off your main way of defending the other team is by pressing L for extreme defense I'll give it to 2K this is flawless for defense and makes the game totally fair for when you our trying to defend the other team. The other part they messed up in this game though is that a lot of teams will pass to their big men and they will get an easy layup and this truly was not my fault when I was playing, I would be defending the player ahead of me he would pass it in the paint and my center or power forward, would be late to stop their center or power forward, and this was not fair, how was I supposed to stop them, I can only defend one person and this would happen over and over again, doesn't seem to fair. Their our really only two modes in this game worth mentioning My GM and My Career Mode, basically My Career Mode is your walk to fame in the basketball world, this has been in many installments in the past and it's still fun to play, to be honest I didn't play a whole lot of this one but I'll just say that I liked it. My Gm was my main way of playing this one I went through the whole season and that's basically what it is, just a season mode with certain achievements you want to achieve for your GM, it's fun but nothing too out of the ordinary, it did have some cool upgrades and stuff but again it's really just a season mode. One thing that literally pissed me off so much when I was playing this game was I got through all 81 games in the season on My Gm and even got through a round in the playoffs, and now I can't progress I don't have any clue why, but I just can't move on, so basically I just wasted all my time on that What the Hell!, I don't know what to say, did 2K test this game?
Overall if I look pats that waste of time I still did enjoy playing this game, its one of the best looking games to date and it's just a really fun basketball game that any basketball fan should own, just hope they don't have the same problem I had.