A Whole Lotta Hoopla: NBA 2K14 Out Now
Netball's little brother
NBA 2K13 was monstrous. I know that seems a controversial statement for a game with a Metacritic of 90, and part of a long-running, extremely successful series. But I'm quoting its publishers here. For some peculiar reason, on the Steam page for NBA 2K14, the description begins, "NBA 2K13 was a monstrous release..." I guess they meant "big"? Anyway, NBA 2K14, which looks more like a registration plate than a game name, is out now, and I expect it's probably very good.
It's peculiar just how extraordinarily realistic the basketball looks, the movement, the physics, the fluidity, and yet the players still look like ghoulish waxwork zombies, their rectangular arms reminding me of the polygonal creations of around 1999. In fact, here's the first NBA from '99 on Dreamcast:
and here's the latest:
Anyway, that's obviously not a massively important element of what makes these games work. And work the 2K series tends to do. Sadly there doesn't appear to be a demo, but then, 2K don't acknowledge that there's even a PC version on their (terrible) site for the game. Which is odd. However, it's priced at only £20 for the PC version, rather than the £40 for the console boxes. Coo.