By Brad Russell
NBA 09 is a professional basketball game made by developers who have no clue
how the game is played. Among the three basketball titles, the 2K series leads
the pack in terms of simulation of this game with NBA Live pulling for the
arcade market. The Live series has made improvements and attempts to get closer
and closer to sim gameplay, but ultimately fell short thanks to unrealism and
just a lack of polish all around. This game does nothing to approach simulation,
but if you are looking for offense this game may be for you.
A basic game of basketball is easy to pick up and play - offense anyway. You
will notice quickly that while your offense is easy once you learn the controls
(2's at least), the CPU offense has an even easier time of navigating through even your
best attempts at defense. The bigger issue is that the computer can play good
defense and tends to easily pick off bad passes, or passes that looked good at
one point anyway. This means that you miss a shot or two a game and have a few
turnovers, there's a very good chance you will lose by four points if you can
only score points. I was actually able to start playing good defense thanks to
learning to play with a big man, but even then this was the only form of
defense I could ever play, and it is not like it worked every time.
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There are many more nagging failings of this game. The lack of controls and
the fact that nowhere are all the controls fully explained just leaves it harder
for anyone to pick up the game and play it to the fullest; it's hard to explain,
but just know that the 2K series offers so many more controls. Then there are
the constant glitches and miscues in the game design. You will find out in a
hurry that this game makes no effort to help you stay in the field of play, and
thanks to some awkward animations on every play, it's easy to turn the ball over
this way; conversely, it's also possible to run out of bounds and come back in
with no one the wiser. The lack of your team giving forth anything resembling
competitive effort at getting a rebound is just unbelievable. You better not
miss a shot or let an opposing big man get near a rebound because rebounds tend
to magnetize to CPU players and your guys will just stand and watch the ball
bounce away. I recall one play where my PG ran in for a rebound, the ball was
on his body and Shaq was able to pull the ball through my guy's body and go up
for an easy dunk. Finally, I think I shot about 10 free throws for all the games
I played and the computer shot probably about a hundred. There's just no polish
to these issues and had the devs tested the game a bit better, or brought in
someone who knew basketball, maybe they could have easily fixed all of these.
The Life portion is part of the selling point of the commercials for the game, and that
should have been a good indication that the mode would be horrible. It begins with a
great intro and quite a dramatic buildup to your game in the d-league, but it
soon loses all steam. You play anywhere from 10 seconds to three minutes of a
game or some random mini game and must meet specific goals in order to advance.
The result is an objective-based "quest" type of basketball campaign, but the
scenarios are too short and too disjointed as far as where they fall into the
player's actual timeline - you could be playing black top golf with your dad one
minute and then you are playing the last few minutes of the NBA Finals. Even
then, some of the moments would be epic if only there were some form of
difficulty in getting shots, or if there was some energy from the crowd at
seeing a rookie win a title, but you can get the four or so points for your
character and then shoot the lights out with Kobe Bryant, or whoever is on your
favorite team, and still pass the challenge.
The best part to The Life, and something that can be implemented to normal
team rosters, is the player creation feature. You can make five different
players and the customization tool is quite robust. The worst part is that the
items and accessories are locked away until you gain enough experience points to
level up yourself, and then you must spend tons of credits to buy them. These
credits are gained through making plays in a game, and they are used to give
your characters stats. This means that before you play The Life you can play a
few quick games, get some credits, make a character that's really good, and then
enter one of the stories with a premium talent. The credit system and player
creation tool could have both been something to make this title stand out and
maybe offer a slight RPG element worth the effort, but it all seems mismanaged
and nothing more than an entertaining distraction. Most sports games give you
full access to making any player you want, so it's almost like this game takes
that and charges you taxes in the form of time.
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