Basketball; a game where tall people chuck a ball around with a finesse only attained by years of training and practice.

But not to worry, short dumpy uncoordinated person! You too can experience the joys of this game with ESPN NBA 2K5. No, it's not a promotional code with which you too can win fabulous prizes by calling a premium rate competition number. It's a gorgeous basketball game!

...and it is gorgeous. It's the first thing that hits you when you first play, from the reflections of the shiny court floor to the fluid movement player movement, ESPN NBA 2K5 presents itself very well.

Unlike offence, defence does not present as many options. It’s as though it’s an opportunity for you to blunder around while your opponent gets to show off their skills. Attempting to steal a ball from another player usually leads to a reaching foul. “Taking a charge” (or standing there while the guy with the ball gets a charging foul) rarely works as the other players tend to take the ball around the defending player. Jumping to try to deflect a shot is hard to time and rarely achieves much. Calling another team mate over to harass or “double team” the player with the ball usually leads to a ‘reaching’ foul or a jump ball. The best options for defence tended to be trying to intercept the occasional pass or to grab the ball after a rarely missed shot at the basket.

Along with full one off games and various full or half-court street games to play, you can play ‘The Association’ and manage a team through a whole season. This involves picking line ups, scouting for new players, trading with other teams, and all the fun you would expect from a team management game. An unusual addition to this is a weekly chat with one of your players who wants to know how the team is getting on. Knowing how to respond to each player is a case of trial and error. Each player is assigned one of four personality types (numbered one to four) and as long as your responses are appropriate to their personality they will go away satisfied. Unless of course they have the personality type ‘?’ signifying that their mood is changeable. It’s a silly little addition but I liked it nonetheless.

A great feature of 2K5 is the 24/7 mode. This is where you get to build your own player, and watch their skills improve over time as you train as well as challenging other players to games. By winning challenges you gain respect and more challenge opportunities become open to you. Beating other players also makes them available to play alongside you in other challenges involving more players. Another nice addition is that the 24/7 game runs in sync with the clock on the PS2 so certain challenges are only available at certain times of the day. Another effect that time has is that if you don’t keep your player in top condition by playing fairly regularly their skills can deteriorate over real time.

Which brings us neatly onto accessibility. It may seem like an obvious thing to say, but this game is not ideal if you’re not keen on basketball. However, 2K5 tries to make the game accessible to the point that it even contains an NBA basketball rulebook. There comes a point where it is assumed that player knows the rules of basketball, which is where some non-basketball aficionados may struggle. But why buy a basketball game if you’re not into basketball?

It’s hard to fault this game. It’s a great basketball game with loads of features to keep you busy. If you like basketball, you’ll love this.