NBA Courtside 2002 Review
Review - a comprehensive basketball game with sim and arcade stuff, and a good one at that
Version tested: GameCube
Slam Monk

Hi, I'm a basketball player
Football, we understand. Any monkey in a green suit can tell you whether or not the ball has crossed the goal line, and whether that two-footed stud-platter you just served the right back was legitimate or not - in fact we might even suggest employing monkeys as a cost-cutting solution to FIFA's current financial problems - but put that same monkey, or indeed your average European, on a shiny wooden court with a bunch of seven foot men in vests and shorts, and before long he won't know where he is, what he's doing or what his name is.
Basketball games are not all the same, whatever you may think, but sometimes they take the best bits of other games and serve them up better; if only football games could still do that. NBA Courtside 2002 offers you all the statistical authenticity of its EA-developed rivals, a simulation of basketball frankly unmatched by its main competitor, and at the same time introduces an arcade mode to rival the almost brilliant NBA Street in terms of 'largeness'. It's like a big measured V-sign pointed in the general direction of John Riccitiello and his cohorts at Electronic Arts.
Coupling all of the above with a unique and rewarding control system, some great graphics and wonderfully balanced AI, NBA Courtside 2002 is so close to being the pinnacle. A few scant remaining problems conspire to spoil the overall experience, although frankly it's still great. If you like basketball and you bought a Cube, this is the game to get. Want to know more? Keep reading.
Coming Straight Outta Leftfield

Last-minute blocks can be exhilarating
NBA Courtside 2002 was released in Europe last Friday, three weeks after the Cube itself stormed the charts, and as Nintendo are sadly no longer best buddies with developer Leftfield, it is probably the last Courtside game we'll see. So why is this one worth adding to your collection?
Well, it's comprehensive and diverse. That's what I like about it. I may not care a jot whether it's statistically accurate, nor whether the players resemble their real-life counterparts - although it is and they do - but give me the option to build my own basketball team from scratch, assigning attributes and giving them all funky names and horrendously ugly mugs, and I'm happy. Give me the opportunity to take them onto the practice court and check out their moves, and I'm hooked. Let me throw them into the mix with professional basketball teams, or take them out onto the streets to compete in the ghetto with real backstreet ballers, and I can't get enough. Or just let me pick any team I like and do the same with them. You know it makes sense.
There's also a unique and rewarding control system. How can it be both? You'd think with a decade or so of experience EA might have perfected that by now, and at first glance it doesn't seem all that interesting or different. The left analogue stick handles the movement, while the whopping great A button is your jump shot or block, depending on the situation. The B button passes or steals, the X and Y buttons produce some dainty tricks to outwit the opposing defence, and the shoulder buttons (L, R and Z) get the adrenaline pumping, enable you to crouch or back into a defender and call for set plays. This is quite complex to begin with, but you soon get the hang of it.
Deeper

Funky dunking
To really do some damage though, you need to pay attention to the other bits of the pad, and using buttons in combination. First of all, if you clutch the adrenaline-boosting L button or one of the trick buttons while you pass or shoot, you'll either toss it to the furthest player up the field or execute a different move to the one you would have done were you just giving A or B a tickle. If you delve a little deeper and trot about the training court for a bit, you'll also discover that the d-pad lets you set your offensive and defensive positions on the field, too.
But the real shocker is the C-stick. If you can get the hang of it, you can use it to play the ball between players, and if you can master the action of running one way while tricking and tossing the ball in the other direction with the C-stick, you will outfox even the most monolithic of defences. Not content with that, you can also feign shots, pass, shoot and dunk the ball in countless numbers of ways, and the animation is intricate enough to illustrate whatever action you take from whatever position you're in.
Graphically the game is extremely impressive, although sometimes a lack of animation can be a touch frustrating. I found myself wincing whenever the ball went off the court and a player ran to fetch it, only to twirl round on a turntable without his feet moving, but overall the level of detail and number of different animations makes for a very varied spectacle. Graphics form an extremely important part of any sports simulation or arcade game - they're the glue that holds the whole mess of sport, strategy and occasionally balls-out excitement together - and the courts, the photo-realistic blanket of spectators, the sight of players waiting impatiently on the subs bench and watching the basket sway up and down as a player hangs from it in jubilation is great. The ball has realistic physics too, and the clear black lines can be seen against the brown exterior as it spins in the air.
Odds And Sods

They think I'm shooting, but I'm not, I'm passing - muahahah!
Equally impressive is Leftfield's delivery in the sound department. Trainers (or sneakers) make that incessant high-pitched squeak as the players dart around, and the crowd roars in time with the action. The ball thumps and squeaks, the net swooshes and the frame balks as it takes another heavy blow. It's all good.
Trying out everything in the options menu will take you an eternity. All manner of fouls, outs, time violations and general rules can be toggled on and off, and you can even change the way the C-stick behaves. During a match you can change to any one of six camera angles, you can adjust strategies and view statistics, and you can make substitutions or watch an instant replay.
Any game which takes this long to explain is obviously very complicated, and for some that will be a problem. The endless hours you can pour into the Season Play mode, and the time you can waste on fine-tuning your side, honing your skills or just plain learning the control system to begin with may get the better of you. This is a long haul, like a basketball RPG with things to learn throughout and intricacies to uncover. It's almost the Pro Evolution Soccer of basketball games, but at times the AI is a little too easy to overcome. And of course for some the 'thrill' of watching humongous male athletes swooping down from the middle of the court to bury a slam dunk will leave them unimpressed. However, many of those people can happily turn to the game's arcade mode, which endows players with over the top abilities and souped up stats, and lets you take advantage of hot spots from which high-point-high-risk shots can be attempted.
Conclusion
There's so much depth to NBA Courtside 2002 that you could stick some water on top and call it an ocean. In the few weeks we've had it, the game has grown and grown in promise, and although admittedly a slow starter, it delivers the goods comprehensively. As for the gameplay dynamic, it's feels and plays like basketball, and you can even take to the courts with four actual players if you feel like it.
If you like to touch up your ball instead of beating it with a studded boot, and you want a suite of features which makes NBA Live 2002 look like an empty shell of a game, then Courtside should be your first port of call.
8 / 10
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Comments (48) Latest comment 10 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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Now a NHL game review would be sweet, hint, hint.
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*cough* Thought I'd say it before someone else did. W00t. Or something.
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Yes, ignore all of them and get a hockey game instead. I believe NHL blitz has mini games plus the most comprehensive fighting gameplay in any hockey game.
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When will people realise:
1) This is a review for a basketball game NOT a FPS. Thus it scores 8/10 for what it is compared to others in the genre.
2) A review is a person's own opinion.
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mike, check out reviews of both games a number of game sites, then make your choice.
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Cheese and chips please.
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Anyway, NBA Live is sack of shit, and this game is not much better. Sega's NBA 2k2 is the best basketball game out there, and Microsoft's NBA Inside Drive is extremely close.
But I look forward to Eurogamer scoring NBA Inside Drive lower than Courtside, despite it obviously being the better game. Heck, that's what you get when all the reviewers grew up with Nintendo.
Graphics are extremely impressive? Bahahahahaha. The computer AI is completely messed up in this game, the animation is incredibly odd, and the control just flat out sucks.
IGN Review Scores
NBA Courtside- 7.5
NBA Inside Drive- 8.7
But I doubt NBA Inside Drive will score much over a 6 on this site.
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NBA Courtside- 7.5
NBA Inside Drive- 8.7 [/i]
hmmm, this scored 8, 7.5 rounds up to 8.
woohoo. they're the same.
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Well, NBA2k2 is a great game with great music and explosive graphics and all the nobs you could want to twiddle, but the two-stick control mechanism of this game looks very impressive. I assume Sega haven't introduced use of the Playstation's second stick since its incarnation on the Dreamcast.
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And Rauper, I like the way your entire post is about how MY entire post is about something that hasn't happened. Who's more foolish?
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Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that nobody else can. We're hardly alone in marking it highly either - a quick check on every Xbox fanboy's favourite site, GameRankings.com, reveals that it got 77% from GameSpy, 76% from GameSpot and 75% from IGN. All of which (to the nearest whole number) are equivalent to 8/10. In fact, the average rating is 70%, and it's only that low because a couple of sites gave it really poor scores. Most people seem to like it and it got between 70% and 80% from most people. Have you even played both games yourself?
"all the editors grew up with Nintendo"
Nah, that's just Tom.
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If this scores an 8, and there are two better basketball games, what are you going to do? Does NBA Inside Drive get a 9, and Sega's game get a 10?
10's only go to perfect games, and even Sega's basketball offering is not perfect. And you can't give NBA Inside Drive an 8 because it's far better than this slightly above-average over-hyped disk.
Then again, you can't give both NBA Inside Drive and NBA 2k2 a 9, because they aren't equal in quality either. I think your review system is a little too non-specific, and should probably include .5's in the system.
None of these games are equally good, and none are perfect. Giving this game an 8 gives you very little flexibility if the scores are given on a comparative genre quality basis. I look forward to seeing your NBA 2k2 and NBA Inside Drive scores.
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I think our review system is too specific - if I had my way we wouldn't have scores on our reviews at all.
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european scum - I'm right & you're all fucking wrong and I've got the stats to prove it, therefore, I'm right, I told you so, etc.
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The quality sports gaming site Sports Reviewers has switched to not giving scores on its reviews. But as I understand it, if a site doesn't give a score at the end of reviews, links to their reviews don't end up on gamerankings.com and that's free advertising and publicity down the drain.
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I think a non-specific rating system is great except in cases like these where there are 4082 different basketball games. If I reviewed my own games on a 5-point scale, i'd give Kobe, Inside Drive, and NBA 2k2, all 4's.
To those who haven't played the games and rely on reviews to help them decide which to buy, how would three 4-point scores for basketball games help them? There's a difference in quality in all games, and I think the point rating should reflect that. And the less-specific the ratings get, the harder it is to reflect the difference in quality.
Not giving games point scores though is very unique and a good idea. It would definitely set this site apart from others. Why not take a risk and give it a shot? It's your site Gestalt, you should have it your way.
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(Oops! Just kidding
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Dunno about other sites but, assuming our stats system is working correctly, GameRankings.com doesn't even show up on our Top 50 referrers list. We get more hits from MSN Finland than GameRankings.com.
"how would three 4-point scores for basketball games help them"
It wouldn't, but maybe they should be reading the review instead of just looking for the score at the end.
"It's your site Gestalt"
Nah, I'm just the editor - at the end of the day it's up to the folks who pay my wages, and they want scores on the reviews.
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1%
I thought I'd get that one in before everyone else does.
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Ho ho ho - that's probably the most stupid thing you've ever said! By your logic the game shouldn't be given an 8 just in case a game that they haven't seen yet turns out to be better. So... they shouldn't give any game a high mark in case better ones come out later? So everything scores zero because there are bound to be better games in the future. Yes? That sounds fantastic to me.
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The reviews on Eurogamer are more consistent than any other web sites I look at. There does not seem to be any bias to any specific platform.
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1%
Actually no, it's one percentage point. ;P
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Gestalt, on a serious note - you could get the other Reviewers to add their perspective in at the end of a review.
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Do gestalt and the rest of the eg ppl get in the team as well?
As far as review scores all you need is a simple 5 point scale
0 - sell your machine rather than play it
1 - don't buy it
2 - buy it if you like that type of game
3 - buy it
4 - buy it even if you don't like games.
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WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG?
BASKETBALL IS DEFINITELY BETTER THAN FOOTBALL(SOCCER)!
I see the four year olds have turned up. I don't like them because I don't like sports designed for genetically engineered freaks (basketball) or that require fat people to run at each other with padding on. Furthermore, I'm not a fan of any sport that keeps stopping to take 5 minute breaks.
Your comments on proper football can do little to insult me. You forget that everyone around the world, except for N.Americans, is in love in the sport.
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Ahem, everyone? Ever been to or heard of the South Pacific? Australia, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, etc. Cause soccer is a minor sport there too. Talk about your typical arrogant, uninformed American forgetting about entire large parts of the world... oh, hang on, you're European aren't you?
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A mistake on my part with no excuse for it. Sorry.
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OH, and it's not a minor sport in Australia. And you'd be amazed at the number of people wearing Manchester United shirts in the South Pacific. Fools!
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Well, I'm off down the pub now to enjoy a nice drink and the opening game/ceremony. Enjoy everyone, and I hope we see Senegal pull something out of the bag this afternoon.
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I hope we see Senegal pull something out of the bag this afternoon.
Blimey mate, got the Lotto numbers too
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You were saying....?
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Well, Mboma for the first and a 1-1 Draw at the Ireland Nigeria game would go down a treat. A 33-1 Treat that is.
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Nice game, the opener. Not great football, and Senegal didn't deserve the victory, but it was a laugh watching it in a bar 100% behind the Africans.
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OH YEAH.
Best fiver I've ever spent.
/me goes off to count his winnings
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