Sega Sports Features NBA2K
Reviewed by Dale Kulas
The Game
Basketball action brought to you by Sega Sports. This is the
first basketball game for the Dreamcast, and it really
manages to show off it's power. Will it live up to be a next
generation basketball game, or just some cra*py sim, rushed
in for the start of the season? Let's get onto the review
and find out.
Graphics
NBA 2K actually captured the look of the game for once. All
the player look real, they're not all polygonal like in
Courtside, Live, and Shootout. All the players have there
own textured faces, and the faces have animations like when
a player gets injured or when they go for a dunk. And the
player intros look awesome too. There are several different
camera angles you can choose from too, you can get the
televised experience with the cinematic angle, you can get
the Tecmo feel with the horizontal angle, you can get the
classic 16-bit Live series feel with the 3/4 angle, but the
default uses the easiest to manage angle, which is the
overhead vertical one. Oh, yeah did I mention how awesome
the Action Replays are in this game?
Sound
The announcers sound great in this game! Once again Sega
hired voice actors to record all there comments for
commentary, and they never get old. The announcers do
miscall some plays though. Right after my guy made a dunk,
the announcer said, 'That's his 7th rebound of the game.'
But these miscalls don't happen all that often in the game.
All the sound effects are good too, and the background music
is done nicely as well. I must say how much I love the
player chatter during the game, I get out of the coaches
whenever they say, 'Pace yourself, Pace yourself.'
Game play
The only basketball games I liked use to be the Arcade type
one's like Jam, Hangtime, etc., because all those other
simulations never got the feel of a basketball game, but NBA
2K was the first sim I ever played that captured the feel of
the game like you're actually in it. Game play is awesome,
but not perfect. The free throws aren't the easiest to make,
you got to hold the L and R triggers to center two arrows to
perfectly make a basket, each NBA player has attributes on
how well they make free throws and the higher the rating the
easier it is to center the arrows, but the lower the rating,
the more you'll be going insane to make free throws. Like I
said before, the commentators miscall some plays, plus some
of your teammates are as dumb as a rock and if they're wide
open and under a basket and call for them to do an alley-oop
they'll just move out of the way and the ball will go out of
bounds, also sometimes guards stand out of bounds and if you
pass them the ball it's an instant turnover. Well at least
the user records and players 2,3, and 4 calling timeouts or
making substitutions bugs aren't here like in NFL 2K.
Plays are easy to call, you just press your control stick
during play and then just press a button to run a play.
There's so much more you can do, you can create a player,
create a team, adjust the NBA rules, and so much more. The
game play main menu, is just like the one used in NFL 2K and
the game play modes are almost identical as well, these are
your modes you can choose from: Practice, Exhibition,
Season, and Playoffs. It would've been nice if you could've
did a dunk competition or 3-point shootout, but you couldn't.
Replay Value
There are some neat little bonuses in this game, like if you
pay attention to your VMU during the game, it let's you know
if one of your players is really low on energy, and does
some cool animations for dunks, and 3-pointers. Practice
mode is really useful, plus up to 4 players can play the
game at once for an all out hoop party, plus there's as many
stats than you can count for this game. And like I said
before, I would've wished they included some challenge
events like shootouts and all, and was very disappointed
when there was no online play in this years game.
In Brief
+: Mind blowing graphics, terrific commentary, easy to learn
game engine
-: The free-throw system is rather hard to use, couple of
nasty passing bugs
The Final Ratings Rundown
Graphics: 9. 8
Sound: 9. 5
Game play: 9. 1
Replay Value: 9. 3
Overall: 9.4 out of 10
Final Analysis:
This is one of the best basketball sims ever! You must buy
this game if you're a basketball fan and own a dreamcast!
You'll go absolutely nuts over the game! Trust me, it's that good!
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