The team at Visual Concepts has basically created an experience that makes you feel like you’re playing a television broadcast of the NBA - especially in the striking, realistic way the players look, move, and behave from the motion captured animation of Kobe Bryant’s gliding fadeaway jumper to the disgruntled scowl A.I.
![nba 2k9 nba 2k9](https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/images.pricecharting.com/AMIfv97OqXm-2qldw3zw7rl0zSeFm7UFgeAMljtJefTH0eWranaVIY2Qy9A108CK9ZdnH-AQEqYBpPLAYfL5QFZIk_XbcyWpMwqO6NCApezUZxc9kvsrU4GjXfYibu1qOsuOJOO0U4AbqIqipsHTyHWAFlP_bqKbZw/240.jpg)
The aspect of the game that immediately jumps out is the slick presentation. My favorite players of this generation - Shaq, Steve Nash, Allen Iverson, and Kevin Garnett - are aging or on the decline, and I just don’t find the LeBron Jameses, Carmelo Anthonys and Dwight Howards of the world all that compelling.īut fear not my friends, for I have not come here to condemn NBA 2K9 through the lens of my own personal biases. It’s a deep, visually stunning game with a near inexhaustible supply of options, but I’m just not as attached to the current players in the NBA. That’s why a single tear nearly dripped down my cheek after playing my first game of NBA 2K9. Bird, a simplistic one-on-one game in which the highlight was slam dunking hard enough to break down the backboard and watching the janitor sweep up the shattered glass. If you wanted real NBA action, you had Jordan Vs. Nintendo’s popular Double Dribble for the NES featured make-believe teams like the “Boston Frogs” and the arcade game made console port Arch Rivals had cartoony ‘street’ players with no grounding in reality. At a time when legendary players like Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Charles Barkley and others were ruling both the hard courts and the hearts of many sports fans, most of the best basketball games weren’t even based on real players.
#Nba 2k9 pro#
That’s because I was indulging myself in the unfulfilled fantasy of a hoops game the caliber of NBA 2K9 that could have been released in what I consider the heyday of pro basketball in the 1980s. Playing NBA 2K9 on Xbox 360 made me a little upset.