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NBA Ballers
  XBXSportsUC  
  opened by paleface at 01:42:16 04/05/05  
  last modified by paleface at 12:27:18 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=XBX; cat=Sports; reg=NA]
           
From the name I'd have thought this was a biopic of Wilt Chamberlain's swingin' life, or something, but no, it's actually one of those "extreme street sports" types of affairs, for which I suppose we can blame NBA Jam. Here you've got just one-on-one action between creepily-texture-mapped versions of a few handfuls of more-or-less current NBA bad-boys, but they've brought along those ridiculous dunks, fireball effects, and cheesy announcer clips that you've known and loved from similar "sports" games all these years.
 
I have to say that such are hardly my cup of Tetley's: the button layouts seem almost arbitrary, particularly in the switch from offense to defense, and heck, here most of the buttons just do silly things like show-off moves not even intended to get you a basket. See, in addition to the actual ball-through-the-hoop points, you rack up other, rather more numerous, points for doing various silly tricks and stuff on the court before scoring a basket. And then there are the much beloved steals, blocks, three-point shots and dunks that simply come out of nowhere.
 
Do people who really like basketball really appreciate this mockery of it? Well, do they appreciate goofy digitized 2D sprites of "fans" pumping their fists in the background? I suppose people must get good at games like this, and I can almost see how it takes knowing which of the unintuitive buttons to press at a certain, unintuitive time in order to pull off the unintuitive, fantasy "basketball" moves necessary to score baskets, but I wonder why anyone bothers.
    

 
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