Total Pro Basketball Review

Total Pro Basketball boasts a solid interface and a wide breadth of duties to keep general managers busy from opening tip-off to summertime free agency.

Unlike baseball, football, soccer, and even hockey, basketball doesn't have a marquee text-based management simulation on par with the likes of Out of the Park Baseball or Championship Manager. Where followers of the other major professional leagues have lots of games to choose from, the game that Dr. James Naismith invented (with the help of some peach baskets) is mostly represented by low-budget titles that don't do the game justice. That may finally be changing, thanks to .400 Software Studios' Total Pro Basketball (only available online from the company's Web site). The first edition of a planned series is a professional product from the ground up, boasting a solid interface and a wide breadth of duties to keep virtual general managers busy from opening tip-off to summertime free agency.

The in-game menu is attractive and informative, and it includes extensive play-by-play commentary and even the ability to complain to the referee.
The in-game menu is attractive and informative, and it includes extensive play-by-play commentary and even the ability to complain to the referee.

Total Pro Basketball mirrors its sister title Total Pro Football in many respects. They are both broad-based, thus giving you full control over a professional franchise, and they are also quite similar to each other in appearance and interface. Unlike so many text-based sports sims, the design goes beyond the utilitarian, number-crunching basics and provides attractive and intuitive screens. Color is used in a tasteful manner to liven up stat lists; courtside photographs brighten up the background of almost every screen; and each player card boasts a photo. Your duties as general manager of a pro basketball team are spelled out very clearly with a league-stage listing of tasks and a TV screen interface. The nested menus that scare so many casual sports fans away from text-based sims are nowhere to be found here. When you need to hire a coach, you just have to click on the coach hire session listing. When you're looking to hire some high-priced talent, you just click on free agency. It's all very straightforward. In fact, it's so much so that even basketball newbies should be able to dive right in.

However, this is not to say that this is a simple game. On the contrary, .400 Software Studios has modeled almost all of the intricacies of running a professional basketball club. You handle every major job--both in the front office and courtside--either solo or in an online multiplayer league with as many as 28 opponents. As general manager, you sign free agents, cross your fingers during the college draft lottery, look after the ensuing draft, assign players to the summer league, allocate training camp time, and, of course, you have to deal with an owner who might (if you select the option) send you packing if you miss the playoffs one year too many.

Player management is the most involved part of your job. Players are rated in 14 skill categories, like ballhandling and floor intelligence, and they're also scored in 11 personal traits, such as attitude, personality, and playing time desired. Each signee or draft pick requires a serious examination, unless you want to end up with the second coming of Chris Webber or Latrell Sprewell. Money matters as well. Not only do you have to deal with tough competition from rival general managers (who are sharks when it comes to signing free agents and negotiating trades), but you have to contend with the salary cap. Thankfully, you can extensively look over prospective players. Added information is also available for the draft. Four scouts submit reports grading this year's upperclassmen and roster of eligible international players by current and potential skill. Colored stars are used in this rating system, so a mere glance at the player list is all that's required to tell which players are worthy of more than a cursory glance.

Still, even with all of these options, there still isn't quite enough to do. While you can take charge of the courtside nitty-gritty and you can substitute players, change strategies on the fly, go for intentional fouls in the closing minutes, and even harangue the referee, you don't have any hands-on authority over what takes place on the hardwood. You can't call specific plays; you can't force a player to take a shot; and so forth. Your biggest contribution, apparently, is changing up the look of the offense and defense over the course of each game and working substitutions to try to get mismatches. This really works, especially on defense, since the game obviously takes height and weight into account. So if you set things up right, you can walk all over smaller or shorter opponents. This can lead to some very fulfilling moments, though it doesn't afford you the same feeling of control as football sims, where you call plays on both sides of the ball, or baseball sims, where you order players to swing away or work the count. Of course, this is more of a complaint about the nature of basketball than anything else.

Offseason duties include such things as running a summer league and handling the draft lottery.
Offseason duties include such things as running a summer league and handling the draft lottery.

A fairer complaint can be made about manual sim times, which are somewhat sluggish. Even on the fastest speed setting, it takes at least three or four minutes to get through a quarter. This seems excessive, particularly when you typically make just a few decisions during this time. Statistical generation is quite accurate, however, so there is a positive payoff for the slower sim times. Numbers are right in line with the currently offensive-challenged NBA, which means that only one or two teams will go in to triple digits on any given night. Of course, it's hard to gripe about this, although teams do fail to break 80 points so frequently (and there are a fair number of scores in the 60s) that you might soon wish for a button that would crank up the offense to 1980s levels. At any rate, you can automatically sim games very quickly with no loss in stat accuracy. In fact, it's possible to tear through four or five seasons in an evening of play.

Even with these minor problems, Total Pro Basketball is a solid first effort. It even includes some much appreciated frills, like a funk-tinged soundtrack that's easily the best ever included in a sports management sim (and is actually good enough that it wouldn't be out of place in a big-budget EA Sports release). Added options, especially courtside, would be welcome in the sequel, although it's hard to quibble too much with what's presented here.

The Good

  • N/A

The Bad

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