Video Game of the Week /‘NBA 2K9’
The lowdown on three new NBA games
‘NBA 2K9’ 2K Sports; PlayStation 3, Xbox 360; $59.99 ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) ★★★★ out of 5
For the plop-and-go, no-time-to-learn, just-want-to-play crowd, “NBA 2K9’s” new/improved tweaks to the franchise don’t make it much different from past titles.
However, a-bucket-full-of-game modes, consistently solid gameplay and expectedly awesome graphics throughout mean it need not dare to be different.
First off, “NBA 2K9” looks amazing; the player animations, the animated crowd, coaches and stadiums have all endured the expected visual improvements as sequels of sequels of a sequel are wont to do.
Now a few years into the new-generation consoles and the proliferation of affordable HDTVs, everyone expects a new-gen game like this to be great, but “2K9” has outdone itself even so.
But like football, hockey and soccer, both 2K Sports and EA Sports have their perennial hoops games, and dropping $60 on a new, better-looking version of an old standby seems ridiculous to all but the ardent — though there are a ton of basketball fans out there, so on it goes. Anyway, as for $60 worth of new stuff, “living” rosters with real-time updates keep your players up to date with their real-life counterparts, which is both cool and competently delivered.
The real showpiece of this year’s release, however, has to be “NBA 2K9’s” freakish attention to realism — and not just the aforementioned graphics and player animations, but the artificial-intelligence interaction, the play-calling on offense and defense, the actual simulated game of it all, simply put, is unmatched.
For serious fans, “NBA 2K9” has some seriously nuanced play mechanics that will play to your seriousness. But for the more casual sports gamer, the plop-and-play set, “NBA 2K9” also serves up quality basketball gaming that’s fun from the get-go. The fact that it retains the depth and replayability you’ve come to expect from the 2K franchise series is a bonus, but not so much that they won’t be releasing a “2K10” next year.
‘NBA Live 09’ EA Sports; PlayStation 3,
Xbox 360; $59.99 ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+)
★★★½ out of 5
EA Sports’ “NBA Live 09” is an improvement over last year’s iteration . . . but it’s not like the bar was set very high in ’08, so “improvement” is relative. That said, there are several things “NBA 09” does well, including the new playcalling and pick-and-roll systems — a little old school, but in this case, going back to the basics is a good thing. In short, controls are easily the most outstanding part of “NBA 09.”
Unfortunately, some of “NBA 09’s” marquee features aren’t as sharp or just don’t work at all. The Dynamic DNA system, for example, is supposed to track the stats of real-life players and integrate them with the game on-the-fly, daily. While it works great, it’s also hopelessly inconsequential more often than not and you’ll likely not spot any significant changes when/if playing day in, day out. So it’s not so much a “marquee” feature as an oversold tack-on.
Also, “NBA 09’s” “Be a Pro” mode, the “role-playing” career feature used in several EA Sports titles, has now made its way into EA’s annual basketball franchise. Sadly, it, too, is mostly hopeless as it bases all your budding stats and attributes off one single game played. In real life, that could stymie any prospect’s chances (or net a huge signing bonus for naught). Ridiculous.
“NBA Live 09” also sports some visual mishaps that are just perplexing for a sports game of this era. You can pass a ball right through a player, for example. Not over, not around, not between the legs, but right through their torso.
And there’s a lot of slow down during replays. Not slow motion, but shame-faced, animation-chugging, can’t-compute-fast-enough slow down.
“NBA Live 09” begs a natural comparison to 2K Sports’ “NBA 2K9,” and the former falls incredibly short when stacked up against the latter.
That said, no basketball-game franchise has made any significant jumps in quality this year. But “NBA 2K9” did just so happen to jump from a loftier perch to begin with. “NBA Live 09,” meanwhile, seems to have merely hobbled on up.
‘NBA 09 The Inside’ Sony; PlayStation 3, $59.99
ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) ★★½ out of 5
Though EA Sports and 2K Sports have been battling over NBA game supremacy for years, Sony continues to muddy the fray by also releasing an annual basketball game.
The problem is, while the two third-party game publishers vie for comparisons like steak to burgers, Sony just throws down some first-party roadkill every year to see who’ll bite.
Simply put, “NBA 09 The Inside” is the inferior game on all fronts. It’s not particularly pretty, it’s light on sports-simulation intricacies and heavy on fast, goofy fun.
With a token nod to the role-playing-as-athlete mode most sports titles are including these days, “The Inside’s” version, “The Life,” is shallow and lifeless and, thus, not worth living through.
But if fast, goofy fun is all you want from your basketball game, that’s great. But you certainly shouldn’t be expected to pay the same sixty bucks the top NBA games command.
Tips of the week
Here are some playing secrets for your favorite games.
There are hidden teams in “NBA 2K9” that can be unlocked from the codes section of the features menu. Enter “2ksports” to unlock the 2K Sports team, “nba2k” for the 2K development-team squad, “vcteam” to unlock the Visual Concepts team.
You can also enter “payrespect” to unlock the ABA ball.
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