In this week's Friday Five, Andrew suggests five additions that would've greatly improved basketball video games of varying quality.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Additions That Would’ve Greatly Improved Games appeared first on NLSC.

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five additions that would’ve greatly improved specific basketball video games.

We’ve yet to see a truly perfect basketball video game. That’s not surprising since true perfection is an unrealistic goal, and we all have our own ideas as to what that would entail besides. We have had some fantastic sim and arcade basketball games though, with the NBA Live, NBA 2K, NBA Jam, and NBA Street series all offering up some candidates for the best hoops titles of all-time. However, much as many of the all-time great players have had a weakness or two, the best basketball video games are often missing a feature or mode that would’ve made them even better.

Interestingly, it’s not just the all-time best basketball video games that feasibly could have been improved by just one addition. There are some very good and even a few mediocre games whose overall quality and reputations would be greatly impacted by the addition of a key feature or mode. It might not quite push them into the upper echelon of virtual hardwood classics, but hypothetically, they suddenly become far more appealing and playable with one big addition. I’ve selected five hoops games of varying quality, and nominated a major addition – one per game – that I believe either pushes them closer to “perfection”, or results in the most significant improvement.

1. Sliders in NBA Live 2003

While NBA Live 2003 remains a divisive game – and understandably so – it did have a lot of good things going for it. Obviously, Freestyle Control was revolutionary. The game was also back on PC following a one-year hiatus, and now had better modding support than ever before. Its staple modes and features were solid, we were now able to select jerseys before a game (including one retro uniform per team), and for what it’s worth, the soundtrack remains iconic. With that being said, its drawbacks are well-known. For those of us who desired more authenticity, its fast-paced, arcade-leaning action, as well as its comedic cutscenes, didn’t quite deliver what we were hoping for.

That’s where gameplay sliders really could’ve helped. They may not have solved every issue – such as the big booming blocks that swatted the ball to the opposite baseline far too often – but they could’ve allowed for desirable changes in other areas. The game speed could’ve been brought down, the effectiveness of Freestyle moves could’ve been tuned, and shooting percentages could’ve been balanced to our liking. There are some mechanical and AI quirks that definitely couldn’t be fixed until the developers themselves did so in the programming of NBA Live 2004, but if we’d had sliders a year earlier, we could’ve fine-tuned NBA Live 2003 to be a bit more sim.

2. Proper Roster Customisation in NBA 2K14 for PS4/X1

Ten years later, the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version of NBA 2K14 is still one of the best games in the series, and for that matter, one of the best basketball video games, period. It’s a joy on the virtual hardwood, MyCAREER is still playable and (mostly) fully functional, and while that first iteration of MyGM is controversial because of the RPG elements and VC unlocks, it’s still a deep franchise mode. Even the historical teams and retro jerseys are there. Unfortunately, roster customisation left much to be desired. First of all, you can only have one custom roster in addition to the default rosters. That makes it hard to mess around with the rosters as freely as on prior gen.

Second, functions such as Create-a-Player and Create-a-Team are completely absent. The latter wasn’t too much of a problem, but the inability to add missing players was most unfortunate. Sure, the official updates took care of the active rosters during the season, but there were some key players missing from the classic teams – including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – that could’ve been unofficially added via Create-a-Player. There was also no roster sharing, which had become a staple of the series. There are other hypothetical additions that could’ve further enhanced NBA 2K14 for PS4/X1, but if I could only choose to make one, it’d have to be proper roster customisation.

3. Dynasty Mode in NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360

This is tough, because NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360 was a barebones release. It hurt the game immensely at launch, and hasn’t done any favours to its legacy since then. It’s unfortunate because it was a huge graphical leap for the series, and the gameplay is solid, but the lack of modes and content remain fair criticisms. To that point, which one missing feature do you choose to make the biggest improvement to NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360? It really needs two or three notable additions to truly compete with the Next Gen version of NBA 2K6, but this exercise is all about choosing the one that will have the most impact. With that in mind, I’m going to go with Dynasty mode.

Yes, it’s hard to go past bringing back the Legends, or retro jerseys, or the All-Star Weekend. Without a doubt, they should’ve all been in NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360. However, I think removing Dynasty and only including a single Season mode felt like the biggest step backwards. You had this new game with Next Gen graphics – players dripping with sweat! – not to mention cool concepts like The Temple and being able to shoot around while the game was loading, and yet you couldn’t even play multiple seasons with an in-depth GM experience! Dynasty was the flagship mode back then, so at the bare minimum, it needed to make the leap to Next Gen with NBA Live 06.

4. Right Stick Dribbling in NBA 2K11

I’m sure this won’t be a surprise for anyone who’s familiar with my thoughts on games in the 2K series prior to NBA 2K13. Although I can make it work, I’m not a fan of the original Isomotion concept, and it wasn’t until NBA 2K adopted right stick dribbling that the gameplay felt as accessible to me as NBA Live’s had been. I’m sure I’m not alone in that regard, and even fans of the older NBA 2K games generally welcomed the change. As I’ve said before, it’s strange that 2K held out on borrowing the idea from NBA Live for so long. Given the bad blood between Visual Concepts and EA Sports, one wonders if they refused to adopt right stick controls out of pure spite.

If so, it was needlessly petty and myopic at the expense of improving their game, but that’s admittedly just speculation. They ultimately came around on the idea, and the games have been better for it. Unfortunately, for all its other strengths, NBA 2K11 is stuck with the clunky old Isomotion. Adding right stick dribbling would push it even closer to perfection. Sure, a full All-Star Weekend would be fun, even more historical players would be great, and more ambitious online modes would be ahead of their time. However, the one addition that was actually feasible and would’ve addressed the most pressing issue with gameplay was right stick dribbling, so that’s my choice.

5. All-Star Weekend in NBA Live 10

What if EA had stayed the course with NBA Live 10, bringing back some of the modes and features and continuing to build on its gameplay? I firmly believe that if they’d done that, we’d still have NBA Live today, holding its own against NBA 2K. Sadly that wasn’t to be, but at least we got a fine game in NBA Live 10. It does have some issues such as poor simulated stats in Dynasty, a couple of ineffective drills in the Academy, and alley-oops are broken. However, those are all existing features that ideally should’ve been fixed; there’s nothing to add there. To that end, beyond those tweaks and fixes, what one big addition would’ve greatly improved NBA Live 10?

Honestly, I have to go with All-Star Weekend. Many of us were greatly disappointed to see it removed, as it had been a highlight of the series since its debut in NBA Live 2005. It was something that NBA 2K wasn’t doing, and the dunk contest and three-point shootout remained fun even when the 5v5 gameplay was in need of polish. Like NBA Live 06 360, NBA Live 10 could’ve benefitted from including Legends, and the addition of My Player in NBA 2K10 also points to the need for a single player career mode. All-Star Weekend mode is still my pick though, because it’s something that we had and lost, and it was the kind of unique hook that really benefitted NBA Live.

If you had to improve a basketball video game with just one addition, which game would it be, and what addition would you make? Do you feel the additions that I’ve suggested here would be the most impactful changes to their respective games? Let me know in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Additions That Would’ve Greatly Improved Games appeared first on NLSC.