ESPN NBA Basketball

"A Failure"

(note: 2K4=ESPN NBA basketball for sake of brevity)

I don't know where to begin describing my disappointment with this game. 2K3 was already a disappointment, but this is even a bigger one.

Let me start off by saying that I was a diehard 2K2 fan. Really, that was the pinnacle of the series. 2K3 comes along, with a few nice gameplay add-ons, such as the face up mode, but overall the physics model and animation sets felt rough and unpolished.

Now, here we are at 2K4... and what do I find? A further REGRESSION over 2K3. Okay, so some things are improved. Let's get that out of the way first, because it's a pretty short list. The presentation is much nicer: menus look fantastic and the title screen is pretty artsy too. There are more modes. Various street modes (1 on 1, half court, full court, etc.), but more notably, a 24/7 mode for people who like Diablo-type games and have too much time on their hands (making a game addictive by taking advantage of the natural human desire to “level up” is just getting old). Several players do their “unique routine” at the freethrow line. Player models look even better. Players can’t do ridiculous mid-air turnaround jumpers from the 3-pt line and sink them consistently.

That’s about the only real positives I can find in this game (did any of them get you excited?) Now, let’s get on to the regressions, or should I say, atrocities:

1.Camera angles

Check out the “fantastic” changes they made with the default baseline camera. It sports a FOV of approximately 120 degrees, which makes it look like you’re looking at the court through the eyes of an insect. Isn’t that great? The court looks so open, players look so small, and it basically looks WRONG. To add insult to injury, there is NO WAY to adjust the camera properties. You are stuck with whatever presets Visual Concepts has put into the game. Isn’t that a great decision? Really, the lack of a sensible, attractive baseline camera is reason enough to return this game ASAP. But, there’s more reason. Every street mode has the camera LOCKED super close. You can’t even change the camera MODE, for pete’s sakes. What if you don’t like super close cameras? Best to return the game.

2. Animations

One word: Dorky. I’m going to use it a lot, so prepare yourself.

If you want to learn how to shoot a jump shot improperly, watch how every player shoots the jumper in this game. They “push” the ball out with their arm like they have the strength of a 4th grader. (thankfully, they softened some of the mutilation by adding a “holding out the wrist while stepping back” animation to finish off the jumper, which does look very lovely and natural)

Watch how players dribble the ball with the turbo button held down. Stooped over like a monkey, absolutely no aesthetic appeal. Dorky at best.

There is STILL a complete lack of proper driving animations. When you drive hard to the hoop off the dribble or triple threat, your head goes down a varying amount, and your shoulder leans into the defender. That beautiful form is captured in the NBA logo itself. Do we see any of that in this game? No. Instead, we have a lot more dorky looking animations this year. Check out the Hot Sauce “crossover”, which really has about the same effectiveness as pointing to the sky and saying “look, an airplane” in terms of fooling your defender. That move comes out a lot if you press the crossover button while running. Please, stop the dork-fest. I’m all for a slight exaggeration of handle, but this is just too dorky. Players don’t even look good doing that move.

Really, the animations sets have DEGRADED overall from the previous series. Everyone moves so amateurishly, my personal feeling is that Visual concepts hired just anybody off the street to do their motion capture this year.

And yes, the animations are still STIFF as ever. There is no sense of fluidity whatsoever. Not enough transition animations from one stance to another. Watch the steal animation, it is just way too jumpy.

3. Announcer

If they took the exact same announcers from last year, I would have been far more satisfied than this dull and uninspired dredge. The new announcers lack any sense of respectability. Whether it’s their feeble voices or their cheesy lines, I don’t know. But it’s just god awful to listen to even for 5 minutes. I’m not kidding, they are really THAT bad.

4. Lighting

While the overall lighting is still somewhat flat like the previous 2K series, something is just terribly wrong with the lighting on the basketball itself. It’s too flat shaded to the point where it doesn’t look like it should even belong on the court. You’ll notice it most when the ball is on the rim.

5. Lack of faceup button on defense
This would have been brilliant, because what’s the use of having a faceup button if you’re going to push it all the time, but now, it’s way too easy for the offense to run around like a headless turkey and slip right by you. The “magical force field” that was really the foundation of the 2K series 1 on 1 defense has weakened considerably, to the point where it’s always best to leave the defense up to the CPU.

6. Inability to drive/crossover off the triple-threat
In the 2K3 series, you were at least able to initiate a drive/crossover DIRECTLY off the triple-threat position when holding down L3. Now, that’s taken away. What is the whole point of having a triple-threat if you can’t drive off it? Your only options are losing your dribble and immediately mash the crossover button (which totally defeats the point of the triple threat, might as well have been dribbling anyways), or letting go of L3 and holding down turbo and running straight in one direction (which looks stupid).

7. Unnatural passing
People whined about the slow passing in 2K3. So they fixed it, and now, you can inbound a rocket pass halfway across the court and have little fear of it getting stolen. What’s worse, the passing animation makes it looks like there is little force given behind the pass, and yet the ball travels insanely far. Very unnatural.

8. Ball “jumping” on rebounds
When going up for the rebound, quite often the ball seems to jump and “snap” into a rebounder’s hands like a magnet. This one looks so bad, it’s almost feels like a bug.

These are just about all the regressions I can come up with for now. But they are enough. Enough to make me lose faith in the 2K series. Laugh all you want, but it is the review’s honest opinion that 2K feels more like an arcade game than live. The dorky over-the-top animations have a lot to do with that. I know that many people reading this review will feel that I am a “Live fanboy”, and that I am purposely writing a bad review of 2k4 for the sake of slandering the game. But, the truth is, and of course you don’t have to believe me, is that I bought this game, did my best to try to like it for a couple of days, and when I just had too much of the dorky animations and horrible camera angles, I chose to return it. If you really look at this game with an open eye, it is truly a grand disappointment. It is lazy, unpolished work, and does not give me a satisfactory feeling of playing basketball. Even if someone forced me to play just one game of the 2K series, I would rather play 2K3 over 2K4. However, if I could choose any basketball game, it would have be Live 2004. Despite the atrocity that is the “pro-hop” button (making the game a drive-fest), the overall package is far more refined and polished than 2K4. At least I can enjoy watching the players move.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/09/03