NBA 2k2

GameCube owners can finally hit the hardwood with Sega?s excellent hoop sim. Does NBA 2K2 outdo Kobe?s Courtside?

NBA 2K2 has set the standard for basketball games across all platforms on which it has appeared, and the GameCube is no different. Thanks mostly to the highly tuned A.I., the series offers a realistic gameplay experience that no other basketball game has come close to achieving. 2K2 rewards you for understanding the fundamentals of basketball, whether you?re executing proper screen plays or taking advantage of offensive or defensive mismatches. It all comes down to how well you can play team ball, although there?s plenty of room for individual showboating?but just as in real life, it only gets you so far in a season.

2K2?s visual presentation is no slouch either with smooth, detailed depictions of the arenas and players who bear good resemblance to their real-life counterparts. The athletes are extremely well animated, which causes no detrimental lag in the controls?the main complaint with NBA Courtside, 2K2?s closest ?Cube competition.

Button spacing on the GameCube controller is the only real liability as it takes some time to learn not to hit X and A at the same time. Because of this, the default setting is different from that of other versions of NBA 2K2 with shooting handled by B and steals or showtime jukes moved to X. It will take 2K2 veterans a while to get adjusted to this setup, but newcomers will have no problems.

The only real gripe is that you can?t change the controls to the default setup available with all the other versions. There are several configurations to choose from, but none enable you to customize individual buttons or to restore the controls to a standard 2K layout. The audio commentary has a natural flow, but repetition settles in rather quickly. It?s still better than 90 percent of the basketball play-by-play out there, but it just isn?t up to the lofty standards set by everything else in the game.

The GameCube version of NBA 2K2 may be the last of the various incarnations of Sega?s hoop franchise to appear this year, but it certainly was worth the wait.

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