I used to be a big fan of basketball, but after I reached the age of twelve and everyone carried on growing much taller than me I lost interest and turned to rugby. Apparently it’s still big in some country out west somewhere so 2K Sports have brought out their latest basketball game which could be the best game for the fans to date.

NBA 2K6 features all the teams from the American leagues and creates an immersive atmosphere from the start with crazy intros that look great, even though you know you’ll be skipping them after the first hour of playing. For PS2 2K6 looks nice and although the characters aren’t greatly detailed you can see who they’re meant to be and the animations more than make up for the hazy details. Characters now move more smoothly with lots of different movement animations for each single action, from collecting a rebound to dribbling around a player. As the movements are subtle but numerous, you never feel like you’re being restricted in how your player moves. You do get problems when you get close enough for lay-ups and dunks though, as after pressing shoot your player simply slides along the court, taking the defender with you, until you’re in-line to start the dunk/lay-up animation.

Although it’s cheap, utilising the lay-up animation glitch was the only way I could get into the gameplay of 2K6, as it’s not easy for someone who doesn’t know a drop step from a drop kick! The AI in 2K6 is brutal and ruthless; if you have a tendency to make solo runs down one side of the court, or have a shaky three-point defence they’ll quickly pick up on it and exploit it. For the first hour I spent my time simply trying to find a way through the defence, as there didn’t seem to be any sidestep or “trick” buttons that I was used to, but from some random twiddling of the left analogue stick I found what I was looking for…

Instead of mapping movement animations like jukes and fakes to the shoulder buttons, 2K6 utilises movements in the analogue stick (in conjunction with the R1 button) to get around players. This makes much more sense practically, as to fake all you have to do is hold down R1 to get into an aggressive stance, flick the left stick up a little, quickly move it back in another direction and you’re away! Although it’s not as simple as just twirling the analogue stick around until you’ve rung rings around everyone on the court, you can just as easily have the ball stripped from you halfway through a move and have to start legging it back to defence…

Now if there’s anything harder than scoring against the computer without lay-ups, it’s trying to defend against the computer! Trying to follow where the computer goes is impossible and nothing short of clairvoyance can keep you in the running to stop this goal. If you manage to keep up with the computer as it weaves across the court you’ll also have to be quick on the block button as at any time he’ll jump up and have a crack at the net. Blocking shots also often requires a lot of guesswork, as if you don’t jump to block exactly when he jumps you won’t be able to block the shot. If you happen to block the shot it usually bounces out of the way, but off-court for an opposition throw-in. Bugger.

The 24/7 mode holds more promise as it takes the now pretty much standard “create-a-player” mode and mixes it with celebrity basketball players, street basketball and lots of short arcadey challenges. These are usually short games with little twists on them (in one game you lose extra points if you get the ball stolen from you) and break the game up from the standard five-on-five court action. You also unlock some pretty stupid stuff to adorn your character with and have a set of training challenges to upgrade your player’s stats. When you’re good enough you get to take a team of your new celebrity friends and play in the EBC (Entertainer’s Basketball Challenge), which is apparently a big thing in America.

If you don’t fancy playing the game on your own and don’t have any friends to hand then 2K6 has a very well set-up online mode for you to try. It has a rating system so that the more someone is un-sportsmanlike or if their connection lags, then their rating goes down and you’re less likely to play them. They’ve got online tournament sections and messaging boards… unfortunately there’s literally no-one playing on them! After leaving the game in the lobby and switching between the empty screen and The A-TeamI couldn’t see a single person even joining the lobbies after just under an hour of cheesy ‘80s action. It’s a shame because it’s one of the best online systems for a PS2 game (outside of the online heavyweights) that I’ve seen.

NBA 2K6 is a good-looking basketball game with an intuitive control system and some fun game modes. Casual fans of the game (or NBA itself) may be put off by the tough AI and bias against defence, which seems to mar the great offensive controls put in place this year…