If anyone but a guard is dribbling, or you try to throw an outlet pass or a cross court pass regularly, you will be lucky to complete 2 or 3 a game, which is a bit frustrating as I prefer up-tempo (as do most players, which is probably why they’ve added this artificial layer of defense). I don’t mind tight defense, but using the Pistons I’m getting at least 8-10 blocks a game, and while my steals are only around 5 a game, my opponents pick off at least a dozen a game. Also, there are way too many steals and blocks. You take too many shots down low that tend to hit the sides or backside of the backboard, and some of the canned animations can have you stepping out of bounds even if you’re pushing away from the baseline the entire time. There are some quirks though that can get annoying. The movements are pretty good, and it’s easy to navigate around the various menus. Still, overall, the graphics, sound and music bits work wonderfully to create a live TV game environment. I haven’t gotten through enough seasons yet to be sure, but I’m curious if they’ll still be talking about him as some hot prospect in 8 years on there or not. If you play as the Wizards, you’ll hear about John Wall a lot – which makes sense, but they have 2 or 3 canned dialogs about him, and odds are, you will hear them each and every game of his rookie season. I wish they could work in more variety, and while the contexts are usually quite good, I could only stand to hear the same thing said about my team so many times. Of course these games do tend to get a bit redundant. Who knew?) Hearing The Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius" play when you first fire up the game and take control of Jordan as he enters the court was an amazing video game moment. In what my wife and her friend once called the greatest invention in a sports game, years ago many games started adding actual songs to the tracklists (apparently my buddy’s wife and mine got tired of the same old music playing over and over and over for hours on end when we were tweaking our Madden or hoops rosters. There is a very good mix of songs that make up the music in this game. Rodney’s Stuckey’s whirlwind layup in my last game looked amazing). The Sprite Slam Cams, Gatorade Moment of the Game, and Jordan Brand Player of the Game replays all look very slick (I love the player of the game one, which shows various cuts of action from the game, played out against various filters. I also need to give a nod to the replay features. Lighting, floors – all of it just feels very authentic. Crowds don’t do much, but they fill space and look convincing enough. Sure, it’s not perfect, sometimes slightly canned animations do odd things like have you step out of bounds when you shouldn’t be, and some faces really give you pause. This makes what the 2K series’ graphics so impressive –they have to account for facial models, physical accuracy (and things like tattoos), as well as varying playing styles and work it all into the context of a game where these already difficult to manager characters are jostling around and interacting with each other constantly. People have a tendency to play in space by themselves. Baseball games still show less of the players’ physiques and the number of animations really are not as varied either. They also tend to be covered with bulky gear. In football or hockey, you tend to be a bit further from the action, so face and hair models don’t generally have to be as precise. NBA games are some of the trickiest of any sport to model. The animations are generally very smooth. So with NBA 2k11 the only contender in the space, did they put forth an All-Star effort or mail it in? This year, EA was going to scrape its prior recipe for the NBA games and release a new series called “Elite” – that unfortunately got derailed for reasons of timeliness and – according to some sources – quality. EA’s brand was the strongest for years, but then the 2k series started to show up strong around 2k5 (back when my Pistons were on top of the league), and the sales and reviews began to swing in favor of the 2K series. Later there were NBA games by EA Sports that captured more unique aspects of the players and their likenesses, and eventually they introduced franchise modes complete with the kind of player progressions that really hooked me into most sports games. It started with the old Tecmo Basketball, which to my knowledge was the first time an NBA game had full seasons, stat keeping and playoffs. NBA games however, have always come in at something of a close second for me. I’ve already detailed in length about my interest in sports games, with the Madden series being a long-standing favorite of mine.
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