ESPN NBA Basketball

"Despite a much smaller budget, it still keeps pace with the competition."

I've been playing basketball sims for many years, dating all the way back to 91-92, with Tecmo Super NBA Basketball, and Bulls vs. Blazers. Next it was NBA Showdown (the last EA game pre-Live). Then the Live series changed everything. Basketball was no longer a side scroller, there was room to move on the court. The series hit a high note the following year with Live 96 for SNES. The one for PS sucked. Live 97 was strong, but not quite as strong. The one for PS also sucked. With Live 98, the series predominantly became PS as SNES was fading out of the picture. And luckily for them, the game started to become good. Live 99 included a fantasy draft and Legends, welcome additions to the series, and Live 2000 was probably the best game in the series to date. Much like before, when Live 2001 came out, the PS version was better than the PS2 version. Live 2002 ended up being the worst Live of all-time. Live saved itself by coming out with Live 2003 and implementing the freestyle control system. Live 2004 takes the system from 2003, and spent what is likely a record amount of money on a basketball title, adding all sorts of multimedia features. Their online disclaimer even takes hours to read and understand, it was clearly written by a team of lawyers. Unfortunately, they didn't spend nearly enough time on gameplay as they did on all these other features.

When the Dreamcast came out, Sega started generating it's own sports titles. These were top of the line quality games. Nobody noticed NBA2k unless they had a Dreamcast. But when Live started to suck during the PS2 transition, the 2k series was able to stand out as the better game in the genre. It is pretty much a fact now that it takes two years for EA to adjust to the newer technology used by the game consoles of the day. Bulls vs Blazers and NBA Showdown for SNES sucked, Live 96 and 97 for PS sucked, and Live 01 and 02 for PS2 sucked.

Sega has not had such problems adjusting. When the Dreamcast died, they made an almost flawless transition to Gamecube and PS2. Despite Live's innovation in 03, NBA 2K3 was still viewed as the better game. Now that Live has finally caught up, Sega faced it's biggest challenge to date. How do you compete with a multimedia giant?

Easy. By leaving your good gameplay pretty much unchanged.

What has improved since 2k3?

For one, the name. The game is under the ESPN brand name now. While the game has improved it's multimedia, it's still leagues behind Live. I don't view that as a bad thing though. The 2k series always keeps things simple. That's what I like about the series.

The most evident simplicity is in the player ratings. I love the ratings in this game so much that I made a Player Rating FAQ to refine the players so that they are as realistic as possible. In Live, editing players is always a hassle. There's always load time with Live, and their ratings are a tad confusing. They often seem like they are rated randomly at times. 2k uses a set pattern with most of their ratings. Lots of ratings are in multiples of 5. That way, all you need to know is how good the player is. With Live, their ratings require you to be too exact, so it is pretty much impossible for something as simple as editing a player to be widely accepted by the gaming community. It requires you to be too precise. Why should Player X be a 66 in Field Goals? Why isn't he a 67? With 2k, it doesn't work like that. For instance, players will only have the following ratings in ''Close Shot''. 97, 94, 92, 89, 87, 84, 82, etc. Notice the pattern? It's a lot easier to classify players when you're not dealing with those middle numbers.

Unfortunately, 2k keeps it too simple. Some of their ratings have remained the same throughout the years. In fact, I am willing to bet there are a bunch of player ratings that have not changed since the original 2k. I found a player with an 86 in FT, yet that player hasn't shot 86% on their FTs for 4 years. Unfortunately, this actually means that a Player Rating FAQ is VERY necessary, because there are many ratings that need adjusting. Once you get them adjusted though, it's very rewarding.

You know what else hasn't changed? The FREE AGENTS. A lot of free agents from last year that didn't even play in the NBA last year are still in the game. I wonder if they could file a lawsuit against Sega, since they aren't part of the NBA's CBA now that they are out of the league. Chris Gatling has not played in 2 years. Trajan Langdon went to Europe and hasn't been heard from since. Dell Curry is still in the league. He's a member of the Charlotte Bobcats... IN THE FRONT OFFICE. Why is he still in the game when he has so clearly retired? Unless the geniuses think he will be Player/Team Accountant.

The rosters are VERY incomplete. What is sad is that while Chris Gatling is still in the game, ACTUAL PLAYERS ON ACTUAL TEAMS ARE MISSING FROM THE GAME. If you ask me what Live 2004's biggest strength is, I'd tell you. It's their complete rosters. They probably have over 99.8% of the players in the NBA. 2k? Probably 97%. They have all of the main players, but they're lacking in the scrubs department. Why is this a problem? Because you can't take a player off the roster unless you have 12 guys on the team. This is a big problem, because Utah has Mark Jackson on it's roster, and only 12 guys on the team. Mark Jackson is out of the NBA, which means it's tricky to remove him from the roster. You pretty much have to create a player (Raul Lopez, Maurice Williams, and Ben Hangloten are not in the game, while Aleksander Pavlovic can only be added via a roster download). Meanwhile with the Sixers, Monty Williams, Sam Clancy, and Tyrone Hill are no longer on the team, but because they chose not to put Kyle Korver, Willie Green, or Amal McCaskill in the game. They haven't remedied this with a roster download either. To date, the only players they have added are Aleksander Pavlovic and Cezery Trybanski. They still haven't added Ronald Murray. Live has Murray in their initial roster as a scrub, and they upgraded him to a decent player in a roster download. It is inexcusable that ESPN has not done the same yet. They have had 3 roster downloads already, compared to two by Live. The only notable things they have done is change player positions for a few players. And this is necessary, because there STILL isn't an option for you to change a player's position in ESPN, yet another flaw with their roster database. So while the simplicity is good on some levels, it is bad on a few others.

On to the gameplay. The Computer AI is the biggest reason why the 2k series has stayed ahead of Live. The computer will execute plays and always seems to know when one of their players is open. The computer takes advantage of the new tweaks in the gameplay engine, the Isomotion and Lead Pass. In fact, playing the computer is usually more challenging than playing a human opponent. It is easy to lose a human player playing defense. The computer reacts immediately to which direction you are pressing, so it is very hard to lose them compared to a human. In fact, when playing online, most people have the computer guard the player with the ball. Only problem with that is the computer does not contest every shot taken, and they are easily faked out depending on the difficulty.

But anyway, with the Isomotion, there is also defensive Isomotion. You can use this to defend against an offensive players move. It works sort of like Rock, Paper, Scissors. It's very much like playing real NBA defense, which is why the gameplay has gotten such high critical acclaim. For instance, if a player does a crossover to his left, you can counter it by using a Defensive Isomotion to jump in front of him to impede his progress, which may draw a charge, but usually forces him to backoff. The offensive player can then counter this with another Isomotion, which the defensive player can counter again. The offensive player can also use Isomotion to step back, which allows them to cancel the Isomotion move (sort of like a fake) and also allows them to pull up for a jumper that can't be completely contested. And of course, if you don't properly counter the opponent's move, you've just been posterized.

Part of NBA 2K3's advantages over Live 2003 was the sliders used. What is a slider? A slider is a function in the options menu that allows you to tweak the gameplay. Computer making too many shots? Adjust their accuracy. Game too fast? Lower player speed. With the use of sliders, you can adjust gameplay to your liking, a feature that has been badly needed by the sports genre. Live fanatics may try to say that 2K stole their Freestyle, but Live also stole their sliders (but does not utilize them nearly as well as 2K does).

There are plenty of gameplay modes. Aside from the usual modes like Exhibition, Season, and Franchise, there is also a Street mode, Online play, and a mode called 24/7.

Franchise mode has improved, but it still needs some work. Basketball games need to figure out how to make good computer AI when it comes to the salary cap and signing players. It annoys the hell out of me when a quality player does not get signed because he is asking for too much money, and none of the teams have the funds to sign him. If that happens, then in real life the player would re-sign with his own team. Of course, I'd still prefer that flaw over the Free Agent glitch in Live this year. You can now trade draft picks, but it's too easy to abuse this to swing trades in your favor. It's still a pretty cool idea though, because the Scouting and Draft system in ESPN is most definitely superior to Live's. You can have a mock draft, and from scouting players figure out what they project to become during their NBA careers.

I don't care all that much for Street mode. It's just a half-court (or full-court) exhibition where players seem to never miss when they are open. The best guys in this mode are shooters like Larry Bird and Reggie Miller, as they can hit 3's consistently from 28 feet out if they are given an inch of room. They do try to add some variety to the mode though - you can play 21 now. That's a game where it's every man for himself. It's a lot harder to hit uncontested shots when there's 3 people guarding you.

The Online play is pretty subpar if you ask me. The server's are shoddy, and sometimes problematic. ESPN has worse online play than Live, but Live isn't the best online game this year either. NBA Inside Drive actually packs the best online play, so if you're just looking for an online experience, your best bet would be that game. The object is to pull out more cheap tricks than your opponent. It's tough to miss open threes, so people will pick the Mavs and Kings, teams with many good shooters, and great ones that will never miss when open like Dirk, Nash, and Peja. Games are also pretty much block parties on the inside. If you could actually adjust sliders online, this wouldn't be a problem, but oh well. I still find the game fun online sometimes, but not only is it not fun if the opponent is using cheesy cheap tricks, it's also a yawnfest. Instead of worrying about whether or not KG will kick it out of the post, you've got to worry about the opponent trying to throw it cross court on the inbound and just try to fastbreak dunk it. And since games are only 5 minutes long, the only thing that matters is the quality of the starting lineup, not the depth of your roster or substitution management skills.

The most notable and innovative of the game modes is the new ''24/7 mode''. What this mode features, is you can create your own player, accessorize him to your liking (of course, you'll have to win some of the better accessories through challenges) and most importantly, improve his ratings to your liking through training challenges. When you get this player, he is pretty much right from scratch. It's up to you to raise his abilities and make him the ultimate street baller. You'll be faced with various challenges in this mode, and you can get the cell phone numbers for certain players, so you can call them if you want them on your side for a 2 on 2 challenge. Good stuff like that. I have not fully explored 24/7 myself, but from what I can tell, it's like a game inside a game, quite a cool feature, and a welcome break from the actual game if you get bored with it. One slight downside is that your player's skills will diminish if you don't use him at least once per day. And don't worry, there's more to do than just play the actual 24/7 mode. You can take the characters you created, and go online and play other people from across the globe online with their created characters. And no two characters will be the same, so it's a very unique experience. One that I have no doubt Live will steal in 2005.

One thing I nearly missed out on is the graphics. The graphics have improved greatly since last year. Players are very detailed down to the last tattoo. In fact, during automatic replays the players look amazing. However, this detail comes at a cost. In order to have such good graphics with a good frame rate, sacrifices have to be made. That sacrifice was the camera options. You can't adjust the zoom on any cameras now. One of the problems people say is that the camera just a tad too far zoomed out. However, with the advances in gameplay, it actually works out better because you NEED to see the whole court at all times. Don't worry, you will get used to it. Just give it a little time.

That's actually one thing that people need to understand about ESPN. ESPN and the other 2k games have a higher learning curve than Live. So when Live vets pick up a controller, and have problems adjusting, they deem that the game has horrible gameplay, with bad controls. Simply isn't true. Many people get frustrated with the curve, and that's why they are quick to judge this game as worse than NBA Live. Give it time, and once you get past the learning curve, it will be very rewarding.

In conclusion, ESPN NBA Basketball (NBA 2K4) may not have the best online play, but it's Franchise mode is top of the line, and 24/7 gives the game a unique feature that no other basketball game out there. If you're a basketball enthusiast like Rashidi that prefers Simulation over Arcadey gameplay, ESPN is definitely the basketball title for you this year.

Just check out the Player Rating FAQ after you do pick it up.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/14/04