Not too early to talk about ESPN NBA 2K5

Personally I think the models don't look that good for the NBA game, but the NFL graphics look pretty good.

 

never played this range of games, not sure they are available in Australia, are the competition with EA... are they better???

 

I liked the ESPN NBA game this year, but Madden still held its ground in the football world. I thought NBA LIVE did go much farther to make their game better last year, but I still found a couple of bugs in the game that annoyed the hell out of me. (like if I drew a charge when Boki would have the ball on the side to inbounds, they would call out of bounds and turn it over. ALso, whenever I drew a charge and the guy happened to score, they give him the foul for the charge BUT still count the basket)

As of the last round of games that came out:

NBA: ESPN Basketball

NFL: EA sports Madden

 

Total agreement. Madden sets the benchmark for ALL sports games, bar none. Their franchise mode is insanely in-depth (setting prices for tickets, merch, food, etc) and quite challenging. Still, EA lags in the basketball games. Though ESPN doesn't have great models for its players (thus the better looking football players sans faces than the featureful NBA models), the gameplay has been far superior as of 2k2, IMO. Can't wait for NBA 2k5 to come out, it should add better improvements to the already impressive add on features (24/7, street, franchise, etc.)

 

Wow those graphics are amazing man..

I have 2k2, 2k3, Live 2004, and this year I think I'm going to buy 2k5.

 

Looking forward to NBA 2K5! Thanks for the links. Keep us posted!

 

That Titans are kicking the dolphins ass in those clips, woo hoo!

 

I used to love the 2K basketball series.

The ESPN series, however, seems clunky and awkward to me.

The game just doesn't flow like it used to.. it feels like you're playing Dead or Alive or something.. you have to execute stuff with precision and it's very frustrating..

Even with the game speed cranked up and the mode set to arcade it's still not the same game it once was.

 

I hope NBA 2k5 improves on the franchise mode. I loved the gameplay but thought that was weak.

Here is an IGN article that lists some of the new features in ESPN NFL Football. I can't wait to see what Madden adds this year

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/511/511167p1.html

"Starting around Week 8 of your franchise, a special guest will visit the studio, draft expert Mel Kiper. Using 100's of portraits of NFL players and blending them together, ESPN 2005 will put faces to the names of fictitious rookies about to enter the draft, and Kiper is the man to help hype and sort out the ballers from the fallers. Every rookie will have his own face and name that Kiper recorded, so the virtual Kiper will break down the draft by position during The Franchise Show."


"The first feature is called Weekly Preparation. In the NFL, the fans see what happens every Sunday, but it's not like the team takes the rest of the week off to participate in dating shows and high-stakes card games. Okay, bad examples, but the players and coaches work diligently week in and week out to prepare for Sunday, and now you will have a hand in this preparation.


The week starts with you setting the tone of your head coach's weekly press conference and team meetings. You check out the scouting report on your next opponent, then decide what film needs to be watched by your coaches and players. If playing as the 49ers, for example, you can tell your assistant coaches to watch film of the opposing defensive backs, either by players or formations. You can then bring in individual players like Brandon Lloyd to watch film on a specific corner, or you can bring in your entire wide receiver corps. You then train this group or player through exercise/training programs to help increase their attributes. You can even choose whether or not you want to give your players a day off. Everything you do not only takes time off of the clock, but affects player attribute points. Heading into a week where you know you'll need a big passing game, you can actually increase a player like B-Lloyd's attributes by up to six points. Don't give him a day off, and yeah, he might be able to train more, but he could also become more fatigued during Sunday's game. If you're not into micromanagement, you can simply setup the week ahead of time and simulate all of the actions at once. Otherwise, it's up to you who trains for what and when, and how that will affect next week's game. At the end of the preparations, you'll see a results page showing the attribute gains of your players throughout the week. And if you think this won't affect gameplay, imagine the difference between a player with a rating of 90 versus a 96, or even an 80 to an 86. This preparation will affect each and every game you play in Franchise, and is a refreshing take on a subject that's been mostly ignored to this point."


"The third improvement to Franchise comes in the name of contract signings. You can now finally setup contracts on a year-per-year basis, even including signing bonuses into the mix to make this portion of the game more realistic. This will also enable virtual owners and GM's the ability to try and manipulate the salary cap more toward their advantage, back-loading contracts so that you can sign that one free agent who could potentially lead your team to Super Bowl glory."

 

I don't think NBA 2k5 looks any better than last year. I own 2k4, and while the gameplay is good after a while the franchise mode is WAY to easy. I'm going for Live next year.

And Madden will always be the best.

 

I brought my first NBA2K4 series game last year and was just blown away by it.


Anyone that has been sticking with the Live series (Like I had) for years should just have a got at this game. Its brilliant.


I still buy Madden games when it comes to NFL. Not sure if I'll buy another NFL game though....I cant see them improving on the brilliant Madden 2004.


Smeg, the series of NBA2K games are avlaible in Australia. They take a while to come out in the stores though.

 

I allways have played the NBA sega series and now ESPN Basketball, but i would like to see them fix the time out situations. It would be cool to actually have 20 second time outs and full time outs, and the players could not get as rested during 20 second time outs. I know I'm a PS2 freak.

 

one thing i hate in live 2004 is that whenever i go up for a layup there is all this contact and nothing is called and that is way too easy to pick up charges in the game too. The ESPN/2K series is the standard for nba games.

Madden and ESPN/2k series is a wash for me there are a lot of features in madden i like that arent in 2k, but one thing that always pissed me off about madden was that cpu defensive players were always faster than human controlled ones. Especially on long bombs even with tubro or speed burst on i could never catch up to the receiver while I see like my linebacker controlled by the cpu rush up from nowhere and then when i switch to the closer man i slow down even with the turbo on. Sometimes in Madden you have to allow the cpu to tackle for you, something i hate cuz i guess its my own personal taste but I want to tackle every play down myself esp when playing against a friend so the trash talking can start flying.

2k never had this problem afaik with their limited speed burst and that the defensive players will leap to try to make a tackle while madden players seems to just fall flat instead of trying to leap.

All this being said, i havent played either 2004/2k4 versions of the football games these were flaws in the 2003/2k3 versions that i didnt like hopefully EA corrected this and hopefully 2k expanded thier options and franchise

 

something i forgot to mention

football games will always have better graphics than basketball games because they can have like 20 models to modify for the entire set of players in the league and have to render limited facial features because of the helmets. With basketball they have to make sure all the players look like who they are supposed to be and add in the different details for each player such as the tattoos on stephon and lebron in the pictures shown above. these make it much harder to make more realistic graphics, but I've been amazed what they've done so far. I believe that sega did a great job by using drawings of players faces to make them look real than EA face mapping technology. Like at least nba 2k2 for the dreamcast, like duncan, kobe, rasheed, mobley and others look so damn perfect

 

agree... graphics for NBA2k2 are the best (for DC)

 

They are available in Australia. Both the NBA and NFL games.
Although they will be delayed a bit, I didn't get ESPN Basketball 2k4 until about 3 months after it was released in the States.

 

Those are most likely preliminary images that are coming out of the first stages of testing. This is how it was for last year as well. The first pictures we got were basic then after that they got better and better. They really worry about the graphics a bit later in the production stage becuase the physics and game play is number 1 then when they have that down they start touching up the players and graphics and boom you have one bad ass game if i have to say so myself.

 

I'm not getting ESPN NBA. The graphics are not realistic. If you look at the first pic it doesn't even have Yao's red bracelet.