NBA 2K13 slam-dunks for a winner

Annual sports releases are tough. Yeah, there are new stats for players and teams, but other than that, we’re still playing essentially the same game as last year, right?

Wrong. 2K have taken their basketball sim and reworked and tweaked so many different aspects of it that it is almost a different game.

It’s improved almost beyond recognition, my basketball-loving eldest lad (gamertag Don Elvissimo) tells me. He’s hammered 2K11 and 2K12, and when I asked him to rate the improvement of the new version over last year’s on a scale of 1 to 10, he said “20” without hesitation.

It’s amazing how much this game has crammed in. Career play, quick matches using the NBA teams and players, historic teams, solo play, two-player games… just about everything you want from a sports game is here.

Recreate last year’s NBA final with Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder? Give the ’66 Lakers team a second crack at winning the NBA title against the Celtics? Go ahead. Or try the ’71-2 Lakers against the current Miami Heat to find out whether Wilt Chamberlain or LeBron James is best.

Or just pick your team and see if you can get them to the playoffs or the final (we’d be lucky — ours is a Colorado house, and chances of getting the Nuggets far are slim).

Career play has a nice touch. You create a character and follow his career from college through the NBA draft to playing in the NBA. After the NBA scouts come to watch you play, you’ll have to go through the interviews to see if you’ve got the personality they’re looking for as well as the skills — that’s a really nice touch. How well you perform in games will determine the deals you’re offered, the time you spend on court, the position you play. You can win skills points to buy training as well.

The core, of course, is the on-court action. 2K have completely reworked the controls to give you much better control of the ball, specifying the players you pass to, allowing defensive dribbles and shots from anywhere on court. You can set up alley-oops and slam-dunks, go for quick two-pointers, whatever you like.

Action is fast and furious. A well-timed snatch can let you intercept a pass or take the ball away from an opponent (but be careful not to foul).

A nice feature of this release is the slam-dunk meter, which rates the quality and pazzazz of any dunk you make. There’s no in-game advantage for the coolest dunk, but the bragging rights are well worth having.

And despite the extra control, it isn’t a tough game to learn — even as a novice, you’ll be up and playing from off.

It’s a rare achievement: enough detail to satisfy sim gamers, easy enough for noobs.

All in all, I’ve got no hesitation in recommending NBA2K13 not just as one of the best basketball games, but one of the best sports games around. Great graphics, great gameplay and great fun.

Oh, yeah, it has a pretty cool hip-hop and rap soundtrack as well. That’d be down to executive producer Jay-Z, I guess — it has quite a few of his songs on it.