In the league of video game basketball a dynasty continues to unfold, where 2K Sports’ NBA2K series has long held court with no serious competition to its NBA simulation crown. The top of the heap may be the seat of glory, but it’s also the target of higher scrutiny. While the lowlier competitors get the benefit of the doubt from reduced expectations, everyone demands more of the leader. A champion’s effort might be chastised for the ten percent it gets wrong, where the same showing from anyone else would be praised for getting the other ninety percent right. It’s unfair, but when you are only a few steps from flawless everyone’s expecting the ultimate payoff. That’s why this year’s offering of the 2K series is a bit of a disappointment. NBA2K8 takes some great leaps sideways instead of forward, circling around perfection without ending up much closer to it.
The heart of the game’s strengths and weaknesses lie in the controls and tuning of the gameplay. Previous entries in the series had issues with fast players penetrating the paint at will and skilled dunkers able to jump their way through the post defense for easy buckets. To their credit, it does seem like 2K fixed that to some degree in this year’s version, at least when humans are at the helm. You can’t consistently breeze through the paint with hop-steps anymore. To further foil would-be penetrators, this year’s version adds Lock-On D, where if you hold a trigger your defender will hover in front of his man, trying to match him step for step. The feature isn’t perfect and feels slippery as if driven by magnetism, but it’s a good start for a fix. Another weird new feature is player momentum, which is supposed to prevent unrealistic cuts. The problem is that even small movements have momentum, which makes the controls feel muddy when you’re trying to mosey into your sweet spot for a three or hit your designated trigger while executing a play. These features all attempt to address needed improvements, but they feel grossly untuned. Half-fixes like this make the game feel more unstable instead of refined, which strays from the path of constant improvement you’d expect from the industry’s leading basketball game.
As for the quality of your computer opponents, this game contains the best basketball defensive AI to date and the challenge is fun to play against. Inexplicably, even though they are handled by the very same computer,
"your teammates’ defensive AI is horrible"
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your teammates’ defensive AI is horrible. You’ll frequently see your perimeter and inside defenders part like the Red Sea almost exactly at the same time the opponent’s slasher gets the rock, as if this was all scripted. Even as you know what’s going to happen next, by the time you’ve switched to your closest man they’ve already dunked on you. This reaction lag is obvious after the computer passes to a teammate, where you frequently cannot switch to his defender in time to challenge the shot. By the time you can get in the air to swat at it, the shot’s already falling toward the basket. When they’re doing this catch-and-shoot thing, you have no possible active role to play in the defense and are reduced to a spectator hoping for a miss. The computer can’t control your defenders competently, and you can’t switch to them in time to react to ball movement. It’s frustrating.
2K has moved around all the controls, but they’ve included little explanation of what does what, which is another major slip-up. It’s not exactly clear what the off-the-ball controls do. When you tell someone to get open, sometimes they just stand there staring at you. There are supposedly new post moves, but I’d be darned if I could find anything in the instructions explaining them. There’s no in-game manual this year, and there’s no tutorial mode to explain the finer nuances like the Isomotion moves. Why do I have to go to Operation Sports to find the move lists? If a seasoned 2K Basketball vet has to go through this to learn "this year’s controls," I can’t imagine what it would be like for a series newbie trying to figure this game out. We know how much work 2K puts into figuring out the best control scheme every year, but all that research is for naught if no one knows how to properly use it. There needs to be in-game help and full tutorials for a game with this much complexity, and there’s no excuse for its omission. This game is hard enough for the casual fan to pick up as it is.
As a likely response to this problem, the most prominent new feature is the NBA Blacktop mode, which is intended as a gateway for the more casual basketball gamer. The new Dunk Contest is its centerpiece, complete with lavish presentation and a familiar emcee from another
"I can’t imagine what it would be like for a series newbie trying to figure this game out"
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franchise: the goofy Bobito. The dunks require just two stick moves in succession, which sounds easy enough on paper, but trying to actually do it right can be frustrating due to the timing of the animations. While the mode is loaded with cool stuff like being able to place cars to jump over or Bobito’s many topical wisecracks ("You may know Mr. Drexler from ’Dancing With the Stars!’"), it comes down to the fact that the dunk contest is probably still too hard for its intended casual audience. If you have some buddies over to play it, they are not going to get the hang of it before they get tired of trying. The rest of the mode does a better job of hitting the mark, with pickup games that are good for a few friends to play over short bursts of time.
The presentation this year has improved by leaps and bounds in the animation department, and it’s a real treat to see all the new detail moves they added. This does occasionally result in overlong animation sequences where you don’t feel in control, but man does it look good. This year they added more "signature" moves, and now players dribble and pass in their real-life styles along with more refinements to last year’s customized shooting motions. The game moves so fluidly now that someone walking by the TV will often not realize that it’s a video game. Despite moving like the real thing, many of the player models still do not look right. At least the gross sweat shader has been restrained in this edition, and the players no longer appear to be slathered in viscous crystal gravy.
Amongst other new bells and whistles, there is more fun stuff to study beyond the box score at the end of each game. The "Plays of the Game" always entertain, and the hot-zone analysis helps you plan out your plan of attack for the next game, especially since this year’s version records each player’s real-life sweet spots on the floor. This highlights the game’s re-doubled efforts to realistically model each player’s tendencies. The game now separately rates the finer details, like how much better a player shoots if they were passed the ball, or if they are better shooting from a stand-still with their feet set. It’s to the point where if you see the computer controlling your favorite team, you will notice your team’s players camping out at their actual favorite three-point spot or making the same silly mistakes.
This year they’ve even modeled player personalities. Displease a player with the "Unpredictable" personality and you risk ruining your team chemistry. This is important in the Association mode as you now define your expectations of your players.
"This is still by far the best basketball game out there"
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For example, you can label someone as a benchwarmer so they don’t get their hopes up for playing time, or you can label someone a provisional starter, meaning they’re replaceable until further notice. If your expectations jibe with the players’ hopes, it works out, but if your bench someone who thinks he’s starter material, eventually he’s going to demand a trade. Try to bench Marbury and you’ll likely end up with a similar result. Since this is a huge part of a real GM’s job, it’s good to see it added.
When it comes down to it, the net statistics of each game is close to the real thing, it moves like the real thing, and the results are often satisfying even after a hard fought loss. The main problem this year is how many gameplay tweaks seem half-baked or half-explained and how there’s no rhyme or reason to defensive play. This is still by far the best basketball game out there for mirroring the NBA, nothing else is even close, and it’s still the hardest working basketball series out there year in year out in trying to better itself. It’s worth purchasing, and it’s still the king, but the way the game is tuned frustrates. It frustrates not just in the literal sense, but also in how the game keeps reinventing itself year after year, coming so close to perfection but never quite getting there.
