THE SPORT COUNT

Let’s first acknowledge there’s a lot right with the game. Indeed, the reviews have been almost overwhelmingly positive, lauding the mechanics, graphics, and gameplay. It’s a good game.

Unfortunately, video game reviewers often tend towards the complimentary, foregoing any serious criticism in favour of being the first to talk up a new feature (we saw this when Madden 10 was released, when each and every review seemed to dedicate three paragraphs to the new ‘Pro-Tak’ feature — a fairly inconsequential element that amounts to little more than new animations — instead of actually reviewing the game).

So, let’s look at what’s wrong with NBA 2k10. What needs work? How far are the developers from a legitimate simulation of the game of basketball?

NBA 2k10 has some flaws.

The Navigation: Confusing & Ugly

By far the most baffling shortfall comes as soon as the disc starts spinning:the menus are terrible. Completely unintuitive, tedious to navigate, and totally lacking in any sense of tiers, or levels.

The benchmark for sports navigation is, of course, Madden 10, which boasts clean, uncluttered and — most importantly — easy-to-figure menus, with unobtrusive backgrounds. There’s a distinct sense of consistency and cohesiveness, with tiers — Play Now, Game Modes, etc. — vertically listed, like the contents of a book. The aesthetic is clean, iPod-modern, with shining silver menus coupled with well-integrated game photography.

2k10, on the other hand, is black and grey, ugly as sin, looking more like a gothic-themed Geocities website than a highly touted sports simulation. Instead of an index-style menu, we get 9 mini-panels, placed 3 to a row, taking up the entire screen.

And selecting those mini-panels is far more difficult than it needs to be, as your selection reverts back to the middle panels as soon as you let go of the left control stick, as if the game doesn’t trust you to make a selection, think about it, and then select it. (And if all of this sounds confusing, that’s because it is). The lack of linear, logical menus — especially when they’re so aesthetically sub-par — is a serious oversight.

My Baller: A Great Idea, With Aggravating Problems

The definite highlight of 2k10 has to be ‘My Baller,’ in which you create a player who is relatively terrible, and try to struggle your way to the NBA, through summer leagues, the D-League, and — if you’re lucky — a training camp.

The idea is a near-masterstroke,  combining the motivation-heavy ‘leveling up’ elements of role-playing geek favourites like World of Warcraft with basketball.

But there are problems. Significant ones. You’re graded after each match by a Stephen A. Smith-looking pseudo-agent. The concept is excellent — you really do want positive feedback — but the execution often falters, as you’re chastised for ‘letting your man light you up’, when your opponent has dropped a paltry four points on you. Or you’re told off for taking bad shot choices — like completely open, unguarded mid-range jumpers.

You’re also forced never to call for the ball, even if it’s a completely appropriate time to do so. If you’re playing shooting guard, and your struggling centre has been doubled in the post, and you’re looking for a kick-out for an open three, you better not call for it. If you do, you’ll find your ‘Teammate Grade’ — a school-style mark, from A down to (I presume) F — slips quickly.

Basketball is a tough game to simulate, with its ebbs and flows and odd rhythms. Of course, accurately trying to grade your play will be difficult. But we’re talking about flaws here, and the dubious — and incredibly difficult — leveling up system certainly is one.

Looks real enough; doesn't quite feel it.

The Gameplay: Sort Of Basketball, Sort Of Not

I’ve mentioned how difficult basketball is to stimulate, but it’s a serious issue for a game trying to do just that.

American football is clinical, calculated, the roles of each player obvious and clearly delineated. Tennis is even easier; the ball will travel from one racquet to the other. Basketball is, for the most part, the exact opposite. Like hockey, movements are relatively free, often improvsied.

How do you quantify and manifest, as a video game designer, the difference between Rashard Lewis (nails treys, off-the-ball movement, spots up) and Carlos Boozer (bangs in the post, fights for rebounds, effective to 17-foot)? They both play the same position. But they’re well-apart points on the wide-ranging power forward spectrum.

It’s clear that the fundamental problems inherent in trying to capture such a free-flowing sport have been recognised by the 2k10 design team; the ratings are seriously detailed, in an attempt to fine-tune the process of differentiating players.

But the game just has to feel right. And, for now, it isn’t quite there.

Players still feel like they’re skating. Like running the ball in Madden, movement just happens — there isn’t the sense that you’re controlling a human body, dealing with gravity, reliant on twitching muscles, with force exerted from outside forces. 2k10 tries to capture the physics of athletics — like the FIFA series, changing directions takes time, and there’s a tangible ‘weight’ to players. But the intense transitions in basketball simply aren’t captured; the movement from being clogged in the post, body-to-body and then, all of a sudden, flying down the court in transition.

Perhaps this is, more than anything, a problem with technology. We can capture motion superficially, but we can’t quite capture the physics of motion. That isn’t surprising — physics aren’t easy.

But this what serious sports simulators aspire to, and 2k10 is well off. It’s a good way from the sophistication of Madden, and it’s lagging behind FIFA.

Random Problems & Bugs

Besides the macro, there are a number of isolated, micro issues.

Why, for example, did I play through a season in which the 6th leading scorer was Eric Padgett, a seemingly non-existent rookie playing with the Chicago Bulls? (For the record, Padgett won Rookie of the Year, over Blake Griffin). Great news for Chicago fans happy to live in an alternate world, but terrible news for video game users who can’t abide bizarre roster glitches.

And why, when you take the Knicks through to the summer of 2010, are you faced with the prospect of using all that cap space for either Joe Johnson, Carlos Boozer, or Rudy Gay? Why doesn’t Amar’e want to test the free agent market? Why does 2k10 assume LeBron and Wade and Bosh are staying put? And why — this is, by far, the most baffling development — did Eddy Curry decline his $11m player option? (One person will love that: Donnie Walsh).

Why, during a regular season game, did I sit there while Jeff Green, ready for an inbounds pass, simply gifted the ball back and forth between himself and a referee? For 2 minutes, the little Green sprite passed to the referee, who passed back to Green, who passed to the referee. It was only when Russell Westbrook accidentally walked into Green that bug fixed itself.

Why is Kevin Martin constantly on the trading block from Sacramento? Why, in my Knicks season, did Ben Wallace win both Most Improved Player, and Defensive Player of the Year? And why, of all the teams in the league, did the Atlanta Hawks win the championship that year? These aren’t isolated problems. These are consistent misfires that speak to a lack of sophistication in how the game simulates a season.

Posted By: Anton

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