NBA 2K6

Thursday, 27 December 2007 00:00

First impressions from watching the demo mode and wow, this looks goooooood! Next-gen basketball is here and it's name is NBA 2K6.

It seems a bit weird that I'm doing this review now, seeing that NBA 2K7 has recently been announced, but that's still some time away and NBA 2K6 will feed your basketball needs for now. The details of the players is amazing, they look like who they're supposed to be and the vest and shorts have a nice fluid movement to them. I remember when I first played on the Xbox and everything seemed to have that shine to it, no matter what it was, it was as if it was laminated, now with the Xbox 360, games have that shine in the right places and a nice example is the sweat on the players.

Saying that though, the skin on people seems to have a bit more natural shine than needed, but then again, it's not that important. What is important is the gameplay and this game is full of it. It doesn't take long before you're scoring baskets in a quick game, what you will find out though, is that the better teams have a habit of intercepting passes and scoring, a quick tip to reduce the chances of that happening; make good use of the Right Button and select who you want to pass to. I kinda found that out the hard way and it cost me a couple of games in the process, but it's a good feature that helps improve your gameplay if used properly.

The whole thing looks so good, the players are solid with great details while looking like who they're supposed to be, Shaquille O'Neal is a prime example. He's on the games cover art, so play as Miami Heat and you'll get to see him in the game, a good time to see him would be in the pre-game sequence and during a Time-Out. The players are a lot more life-like than ever thanks to the next-gen technology, more face movements and proper skin textures help improve visuals with just one little niggle, the players movement can be a bit juddery at times, but that would be more to do with so many people moving around at the same time.

Once you get playing, the controls get easier and the 3-pointers become like second nature and that's good because you're rewarded for doing good things. You have what you could call a trophy room, known as The Crib, this is where you can play a couple of mini-games that need to be unlocked first. When you play basketball games, doing certain things gain you 'Crib points', these points can be redeemed in The Crib to 'unlock' things like an Air Hockey game, Darts game (both of which need 2000 points to unlock), banners, flags and even those wobbly head figures.

Practice mode lacks what could be decent practice, Standard is just running around and getting used to what buttons do what, you can pretty much do what you want since it's a free-for-all kind of practice. You can try out the passing and shooting from all over the court, but it really isn't much good unless there are two of you, the cpu doesn't do anything in practice mode. Then there's the Free Throw practice mode where you basically practice the free throws you get after a foul, all you need to do is ignore the annoying heartbeat type vibrations of the controller, pull back on the right analogue stick and let go at the right time. Will probably take you less than a minute to master that.

Included in the game modes is a Street version with full or half court, 1 on 1 or 21 options. 21 is where there are 3 or 4 players in an every man for himself situation, the ball has to be 'cleared' (taken to the three point line) and then you make your way past two (or three) defenders to score a basket, then you get to take around three free throws to build up your score. It's actually a better way to practice due to the amount of offence and defence required and if you want to make it even more of a challenge, choose a small player, you'll need to get the ball from the other guy before he gets to the basket as you'll have no chance of stopping him otherwise.

The Association is basically the manager mode where you control everything and take your team through the pre-season right up to the championships. Tournament mode is just that, a tournament that you can set up with up to sixteen teams and try to win it. Situation mode can also be good practice seeing as you set up a game situation to play through, every aspect can be chosen, from how long is left on the clock to how many fouls each team has commited.

24/7 mode, create your own player and take him to the top. Get yourself onto street courts to take on challenges which build up Development Points, train your guys skills up by 'spending' these points and make him a better player. It's just one of the better modes that give the game so much for you to do, instead of just playing through a season or manager mode, you can get hours more play through the different modes, especially the 24/7 mode.

To summarize, it's what a basketball game should be, great graphics, sound and gameplay with plenty to do and not leave you wanting more after 5 minutes. NBA fans will like how every player and their stats are in there with each one looking like their real life counterpart.

Sports gaming fans will like it because it's a darn good game that can be played with up to four players and the ability to have four players on each team on Xbox Live. That means you can have up to eight people in co-op in a Live game, loads of fun to be had and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone that wants to have some great multiplayer basketball gaming. I'm just finding it hard to bring myself to taking the disk out of the console to play something else...

8.5