NBA 2K3

Celtics vs Lakers. Nope, it means nothing to me either.

Video games are a strange creation. Many replicate real life events and situations virtually, to give people a chance to do things that they wouldn’t normally. The question is whether or not the events are fun. Many remember with something less than fondness the athletic games in the 80’s that required that you mash buttons, undoubtedly created by hardware manufacturers to make the general public fork out more money for extra controllers. Personally I don’t see how that kind of game is fun, but certain situations are captured superbly by games. Basketball has always been one of them.

Presenting the loading screen

Now that's a good way of hiding loading times.

I’ve never had as great a basketball game experience since NBA Jam Tournament Edition on the PSX, because of its amazing arcade gameplay, therefore I was looking forward to NBA 2K3. Maybe this game could do better?

NBA 2K3 has two variants of play, Arcade and Simulation. Both versions are realistic, but the Arcade mode dispenses with some of the more technical aspects of the game such as the fouling system, and if you don’t know the rules, it is very easy to give away penalties every few seconds. On starting Arcade mode however, it didn’t take long for me to feel like I was controlling my boys like a puppeteer.

The first thing that took my attention however was the superb presentation. Loading times are compensated for by an ESPN style opening presentation, where each team is looked at, with scrolling images and vocal commentary while the game is loading. This leads beautifully into the 3D representations of the court (of which the variations are subtle, but realistic) and the opening show where each player is introduced. Naturally you can only skip this presentation after the game has loaded, but I felt that it was an incredibly well presented opening for each game.

Looks like Basketball to me

Savour every dunk, watch your favourites in replay from any angle.

The game begins, and you notice the graphics to be rather good. The players are nicely detailed, move fluidly (no doubt thanks to some great motion capture) and look like their real life counterparts; the court has a nice shiny floor, the crowd is animated realistically and looks like there are a lot of people there. After a few quick plays, the odd pass, and a beautiful dunk, a replay kicks in to truly show off the skill of it (shame it was the computer’s score).

At any point in the game you can pause it and check the replay of the last 15 seconds or so, controlling the camera and the speed precisely (the harder you push on the shoulder buttons, the faster the camera moves), and I can’t help but marvel at the super slow motion replays of some of the more impressive team plays, especially when the net flops around beautifully after a score. You’ll even notice the players moving in mid air to make the most of their shots.

Whenever possession changes between the teams however, the camera will freeze mid game and do a mini bullet time style swish around the ball to give the team who now have the ball a view up the court. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but if you’re playing without fouling and hold someone back, the ball will fall out of possession and it will take a few attempts to pick it up. If there are members of both teams grabbing at the ball, the camera spins round four or five times before one team gets control again. Taking you out of the game like this is frustrating, but would be hard to avoid without giving one team an advantage of being able to see the entire court on offence.

Commentators and squeaks

No floor squeaking here, but plenty of weather sounds.

The sound is pretty impressive too though, with awesome commentary almost constant throughout the game, with few repetitions in their phrases. The commentators read the score, tell you statistics of the game and generally comment on the plays. The sounds that apply to shoes squeaking on the floor made me revisit my school gym days, without the pressure of having to go behind the bike sheds afterwards (probably to be beaten up of course). The final icing on the sound cake are the music samples played at appropriate times (I assume like in the real NBA), and the swish sound. Yes, the one sound that represents a delectably positioned shot, nothing but net, is gratifying and satisfying.

A.I.ii, is that fair?

This 'may' be a foul.

So the games of basketball are pretty great, outwitting the enemy, stealing the ball and accidentally running out of the court, but there’s a downside. Many of the games you’ll play will be very similar to one another. Enemy AI is good, but unless you change the difficulty level, or manually edit the AI sliders (a good feature, but a hassle to do manually) they’ll react in a very similar way in each game. The biggest variation comes from the number of players you can have in a game (‘2 on 2’ to ‘5 on 5’), but there is a little saving grace, and that’s the street mode. Choosing the NBA players you’d like to use, the outside gravely playground is a welcome change, and this dirtys up the game a little more, since you won’t get penalised for as much.

Unfortunately, the AI doesn’t seem to work always in your favour. When you’re on the offence, you’ll find it very difficult to find a gap in their defence, without a lot of luck (or skill, but to avoid putting my own skill down, I’ll maintain it’s luck), but when you’re defending, even if you have four computer-controlled men in defence, against three attackers, your men will often cover the two attackers while avoiding challenging the ball holder, leaving him open to make a quick dunk, a very frustrating ‘feature’.

A La Mode

Street mode, but hopefully the ball won't get stuck in a tree.

There is a season mode, where you can play up to 72 matches in a season to try and bring your chosen team to the forefront of basketball excellence. Choose your tactics in advance, hire and fire people, coach your team and deal with injuries, if you can be bothered. A franchise mode is basically a season, but that allows you to customise the features of the season, and is very much more for a hardcore fan. Finally, you can practice your scrimmages, free throws or standard plays in the aptly named practice mode.

The game is very scalable, when you begin you shouldn’t have too much of a problem on the easiest settings, but up the AI or general difficulty and you’ll be challenged within no time, but the real question is whether or not there is enough incentive to play anything other than ‘quick games’, or even to increase the difficulty. It’s short term fun, but in a similar manner to other games connoisseurs will be used to.

If I can just squeeze between them all...

It is clear to see the effort put into creating a perfect game of basketball, but I find it hard to play more than two games in a row, because of the repetitive gameplay, of course playing a game like this in single player may not be the best way to enjoy it, and to be fair, it is very satisfying to beat your flatmates, and if you’re not a bad loser, you may enjoy the game even if you lose!