Pass. Review

Pass.

While the superstars routinely grab headlines with their big stats, inflated salaries and flashy play, most of the NBA is composed of average ballplayers just trying to eke out a living on the measly league minimum of $366,931. For shame! Chump change like that could hardly buy two Escalades. It’s a hard knock life.

You don’t hear much about these guys unless you’re an avid hoops nerd, and

even those who are rarely follow the careers of perpetual journeymen like Jim

Jackson, Popeye Jones and Tony Massenburg. But they’re always there, taking

it in the wallet so guys like Iverson and Kidd can do what they do best: pose

for pictures.

Likewise,

989’s NBA Shootout series seemingly exists merely to play counterpoint

to the routinely better NBA Live and NBA

2K (ESPN) games. Once again we find the series making a run for the playoffs

in NBA Shootout 2004, but no matter how hard it tries, it seems

destined for mediocrity thanks to marginal graphics, disappointing gameplay

and tougher competition than the 2003/2004 Lakers.

It all begins and ends with the gameplay; and in this case, ends. The control

is sluggish and limited, especially when compared to Live‘s

excellent Freestyle or even ESPN‘s IsoMotion. The right-analog

stick will let you pull off either a juke or spin move, but neither are very

necessary since you can basically shake the defender just by running around

back and forth like an idiot and driving for the easy dunk. The jump shooting

mechanic (releasing at the top of your jump for the best shot) is barely evident,

making the outside shot arbitrary at best. Get used to lots of clangs and tons

of layups. At least they fixed last year’s horrendous inability to pass out

of a shot.

Defense is terrible. Blocked shots are pretty common yet almost always rocket

out of bounds. Steals are equally easy so long as you mash on the steal button

and ignore the few times you get whistled for a foul. The A.I. goes from retarded

to adequate as you ramp up the difficulty, though at the highest setting it’s

still pretty easy to score by shaking and driving.

Some of these problems can be attributed to the shoddy graphics, as

Shootout 2004 continues the series’ dubious distinction of being a

visual step or three behind the competition. Players glide and glitch their

way across the floor, jerking along thanks to an unsteady framerate. The facial

modeling is pretty bad; you’ll make out Kobe and Garnett, but good luck figuring

out what insane picture they used for Devean George’s model. The courts look

fine with reflective surfaces, but the player lighting is archaic, just a round

black shadow under each guy, the tell-tale sign of a dated engine. If the franchise

is ever going to really compete with the EA’s and ESPN’s of the world, it needs

a very serious graphical overhaul.

Though the game gives you a nicer selection of camera angles than the other two, it also includes an irritating replay cam shot that triggers frequently after a team scores. It ruins the gameplay flow and often will screw up your full-court defense. While you’re stuck watching some close-up shot of whomever on your team just scored, your opponent will quickly move the ball upcourt, largely unguarded. And no, it cannot be turned off. There’s also a new “Poster Cam’ that will suddenly flip a slow-motion switch so you can get a more theatrical view of a big play, but even this is broken because it tends to go off somewhat randomly. It’s great for a breakaway basket, but why does it trigger when my guy loses the ball and goes up for a hopeless, ball-less dunk?

So the gameplay and the graphics don’t get the job done, but as a consolation, the game offers some cool features not found in the other games, the most notable of which is its continued inclusion of the NBDL (National Basketball Developmental League).

Where

most b-ball games pour their single-player depth into a Franchise mode that

allows you to play GM, Shootout opts instead for an improved appearance of last

year’s Career mode. Here you create a player and take them through the summer

league and possibly into the NDBL for a shot at an NBA contract. The point is

to amass enough “Career points’ over your career to be inducted into the Hall

of Fame.

It’s an admittedly good idea, but trips over itself repeatedly. The player creator is not very good, giving you just a few face types and very limited control over the facial features. Unlike the regular player creator, you don’t set any skills here; instead, your skills increase as you play. Sink lots of threes and watch your three-point stats climb. I love the concept, but you don’t really know how, when or why many important stats improve, such as speed or ball-handling.

Each game you play presents a list of goals; accomplishing these will earn

a contract offer from an NBA and/or an NBDL team. If you accept an offer to

play in the NDBL, don’t expect to find much love, though. The only stats Career

tracks are for your created player and for the NBA, so while your NBDL team

goes 7-0, you won’t know since you don’t get any NBDL league standings. You

also won’t know any of the guys in the NBDL (most of whom have at one point

starred in college or played a few games for an NBA team) because here they’re

all fictitious. I’m sure the

NBDL guys really appreciate that.

Other standout features include really big playbooks, the ability to unlock

50 legends and actually draft them onto your team and the ballyhooed voice recognition

ability. By way of the standard or Socom headset, you can be a player/coach

and audibly calls plays. Go ahead and scream for a 2-3 Zone or to Double-team

the Center. It works okay and shows a definite creative spark, though it’s only

marginally better than just using the D-pad.

Shootout also scores some brownie points for its continued

deal with Bill Walton as the commentary guy. Ian Eagle’s play-by-play isn’t

great, but hearing Walton’s endless stream of overexuberant quips will put a

smile on any gamer’s face.

The one area in which Shootout actually trumps the others

is online play. 989 has built a robust, efficient online matching and stat-tracking

system, making it easy to find other ballers and get a match up and running.

The stat-tracking and ease of setting up tournaments are impressive.

But like most of NBA Shootout 2004, this is lost on a game

that simply doesn’t have the gameplay or graphical goods to challenge Live

or ESPN. At one point in time, Shootout was

a serious contender; 989 might want to go back about

7 years and re-examine what got them there in the first-place’which, incidentally,

is not where this one finishes.