NBA 2K6 Review (no fat)

Game Description

Developed by 2K games, NBA 2K6 essentially and impressively continues to be the best basketball game title around. NBA 2K6 is all about professional basketball both on and off the ground.

The game makes you line up with superstars and play some super charged matches. However, when you are not playing tournaments, you get to manage your players, train them out of their weaker areas, or even do some endorsement deals.

NBA 2K6- Gameplay

Game play in NBA 2K6 is richly enhanced; along with various action moves, there are tight and precise controls to accompany a host of game modes. You can play both single player and online modes. In single player mode, there are tournament, a full NBA season plus a cool, and ever better, Franchise mode with some street and mini games.

In the tournament mode, you can play from a range of tournaments with loads to teams to choose from. If you want to win a whole NBA season, you can play the season mode or if you’d rather see your strengths and weaknesses and assess yourself, you can test yourself through a series of mini games.

Franchise mode awaits gamers interested in showing off their management skills. Here you take full control of your NBA franchise, decide what is best for them, make all management decisions, hire the best coaching staff according to their personalities, hold important meetings with players, coach, staff or report progress of your team to press and fans or even go for year round scouting to decide future prospects for your team.

In order to keep track of other players matching your profiles, the unique VIP system lets you keep track of all your friends and other players who match your profiles. You can challenge their profiles to continue your pursuit for excellence.

As for gamers who like to create players there is the richly enhanced 24/7 mode. You can create your own player, let him through a series of rigorous training, evaluate his performance, make him walk through the corridors of what it takes to be a real NBA superstar and them secure his birth in a high profile team, do endorsement deals, challenge other stars or even create a team totally of your own.

NBA 2K6 AI

The AI is much more robust in NBA 2K6 and gives you a very realistic game play. There are no stupid instances like ball rebounding from player’s shoulders, team mates running into their own mate, players not blocking the shoot of opponents. In fact, AI is so tactical that even in default difficulty, you can’t score from a place standing still and taking time to position your move, and if you do that the ball is not likely to be in your hand any longer.

NBA 2K6 Online

During online gameplay, you and your friends can make a team and challenge other players or pit your teams against each other. The gameplay is very smooth and very rarely does it lag. However in cases of detailed animated cut scenes, gameplay seems to suffer a little due to the rich graphics.

NBA 2K6- Controls

Controls in NBA 2K6 have improved drastically from its predecessor, NBA 2K5. Revamped controls, with some of them designed from the scratch, the results are much more focused, more directional and more precise. A big change is that the triggers are not the turbo trigger as in the traditional sense. They now play a major role in how your total movements are interpreted such as shooting the ball, making a pass and your individual moves. Shot stick and the new isomotion techniques are perhaps the most interesting part in controls of NBA 2K6.

NBA 2K6- Graphics

NBA 2K6 continues to be one of the most graphically fabulous basket ball game series with extremely rich and detailed graphics. Players are modeled with great detail taking care of all the features such as skin, color complexion, figure, facial appearance and even emotions.

Courts are revamped and given new touches with fine textures giving them very glossy and realistic feel. Crowds are not ignored in the game and are not depicted as 1-d models but rather have fine details and different modes of behavior thus making it a very delightful experience.

Player collisions, special moves and goals are extremely detailed and can be viewed from different angles. Players during the animated scenes and making special moves do not appear to have static faces and their facial expressions constantly changes. For example in event of a collision players eyes widen and they try to avert the collision by aligning themselves sideways and their motion changes considerably.

But while graphics are extremely rich, in online gameplay, during some cutout animated scenes, the game tends to lag. Also courts sometimes become very shiny thus causing confusion and players are sometimes very blurry. Also, a large number of ads based replays can be annoying…

NBA 2K6- Audio

Not leaving any loose ends, audio is also as good, but not original, as gameplay and graphics. The soundtrack sometimes seems to lose its touch from time to time, however, all major events, goals and scenes are accompanied by fast tracks mostly playing rap and offensive beat music. It would have been nice if soundtrack of NBA 2K6 too would have been designed from the scratch to give an entirely appeasing experience.

NBA 2K6- Summing Up

NBA 2K6 continues its legacy to be the best basketball game in terms of every aspect ranging from solid gameplay with loads of exciting modes like 24/7, VIP, Online, Franchise. Each one of these mode is in itself simply irresistible and nicely designed. Classic AI accompanied with gorgeous graphics, tighter and unique controls and some jazzy audio makes it a must have.

NBA 2K6- Cost

This PS2 game currently retails for $39.99US at the time of writing.