NBA 2K
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Visuals During the opening tip off, there is no way to select a camera angel to your liking; however, once the ball is tipped you can pause the action and select the desired camera angle (more on this later). When play begins, much, if not all of the awe inspiring graphics seem to dissipate. In the heat of battle the difference in the way the players look is nominal from the default view. When close enough to observe the detail in the players, the lack of distance prevents you from seeing the roundball action in its entirety. When the view is adjusted so one can see the entire arena of play (most often this entails the 3 point circle, the base line and the basket) the distance disallows one to view the players in detail. This leaves the player to witness the astonishing detail only in pre-game intros, free throws, and replays. Don’t misunderstand , the in-game graphics of the players is better than previous hoops titles, but only nominally. Suffice to say, the difference in the in-game detail and graphics from NBA Live 99 to NBA2K are nowhere near equal to the jump NFL2K made over Maddens. Though this may be true, as in NFL2K, the improvement in detail has led to a number of new aspects of game play. The ball can carom off of a players knee, shoulder, stomach and hand, and all of which are represented very well graphically. This is another instance of rendering 3D graphics and physics models combining to make sports titles a bit more realistic. It succeeded in NFL2K to near perfection; however, in NBA2k it is simply a subtle treat which is overwhelmed by mishaps in design. These mishaps bear their heads in the audio, options and gameplay areas of the title. Once again, it is impossible to save settings and a season on a separate file. This means that in order to simply save the settings which must be tweaked to get the gameplay right, one must use the full 198 blocks on the memory card. I’m shocked that Sega opted not to fix this problem seeing as it was so apparent with their NFL launch title. Frankly, there are so many no-brainer options that are not available that it leaves one to wonder what the future of Sega sports will be like. |