In Europe, despite having a significant following, basketball isn’t really the most popular sport. A much different story can be told for the United States of America, where the following is much bigger (although despite this, even there basketball is still beaten by football in mere popularity); the USA also have the most famous and celebrated championship in the whole world, the NBA.
This legendary league has been featured in many videogames through the years and the last one to be published is NBA2K13 from Visual Concepts. Published, as the title suggests, by 2K Games, this basketball simulator is probably the best ever made, if I may; and it is not really something to be taken for granted.
A negative example of this can be found in the PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) series which, despite the improvements added in the last few editions, completely lost the top spot for football simulations to EA Sports’ FIFA, now unanimously regarded as the best title in the genre. There was a similar fight between NBA2K and NBA Live (another brand belonging to EA Sports), but Electronic Arts hasn’t published a new NBA Live title in years now; it’s been three full years with 2KGames as the uncontested champion, and one might think they could rest on their laurels, but they did not, instead improving the new chapter every year.
One of the most advertised additions (it’s even featured in the game’s logo, during the i
It’s not easy to handle all the many actions at once, at least initially. Some combos for a reverse smash, for example, require not only the pressure of the shoot button but also a few movements with the analogue sticks. To be able to play NBA2K13 at the highest level, then, one needs to dedicate quite some time to the training section, where all the available moves are fully explained. Only then the game can be enjoyed to the fullest, avoiding repetitive actions and revealing the best gameplay features.
A great commentary helps a great deal to set the game’s tone, despite the usual videogame shortcomings (like repeated sentences, or inappropriate voice tones in certain moments), and to recreate a basketball game’s atmosphere. The graphics is even more impressive: whilst player faces are not modeled perfectly, their moves and bodies are, and the same can be said about coaches and referees. Even the smallest details are there, like the fluttering of players shorts during movements and the well-loved animation of the net after a successful shot.
I’m also happy to report that player sliding on the parquet has been finally eliminated: in the past few editions of NBA2K, it was rather unpleasant to see players running without a precise correlation between legs movement and the effective change of positions on the field.
It is known that basketball can be very physical, especially right under the net, where players are confined in extremely small spaces and physical contact is continous. In the past, models would sometimes collide in the wrong way when trying to get past defenders, but luckily this has been improved as well for NBA2K13.
The gameplay modes offer the biggest draw to buy this game. Even though the moment-to-moment action has been improved once again, without some innovation things could get boring in the long run and lose some of the appeal for those that already own NBA2K12. “My team” mode is a sort of Ultimate team thing and requires an Internet connection to work.
As with FIFA’s Ultimate Team, the game sets various goals to pursue and the player will need to improve his/her team by acquiring the desired trading cards. “My career”, on the other hand, is the only mode that gives the chance to create a new young player - perhaps yourself - and bring him all the way up to NBA, starting from the minor leagues. Another novelty sees the player confronting the club much more often: here, the diplomacy skill will be tested in order to get the most out of the contract. In “Association”, the goal is to be a team’s manager, in a similar way to a basketball version of Football Manager, although way less complex.
The only real issue I can point out about NBA2K13 lies in its menus. The icons positioning and and overall interface navigation is confusing; basically the main menu only allows to start either a quick match, the Career mode or “My team”.
To get to the other options one must press the square button (X on Xbox360), only then the appropriate menu will appear. The problem is that this is absolutely unclear, to the point that I bet many players were really confused by this and only got there by trial&error. Of course, as you can see, I’m nitpicking, which is a very good sign for the product.
