Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five staples of bad basketball video games.

What makes a bad basketball video game? Well, in a nutshell, it’s neither a fun video game, nor is it a good representation of basketball. Now, there are obviously different ways to represent basketball in video game form, with simulation and arcade being the two main subgenres of hoops titles. Within those subgenres, there are different styles with varying amounts of realism and wackiness according to their concept. To that end, just because a particular approach isn’t to your liking, it doesn’t objectively mean that it’s a bad game. Indeed, this goes for basically anything we care to critique!

However, as is the case with all other genres of video games – not to mention other media – there are bad basketball titles. These bad basketball games tend to have some common traits; some staple drawbacks and design choices, if you will. Not every bad game will have all of these staples, and admittedly they can also show up in mediocre and even good games to a small extent. It’s just that bad basketball games err really badly in these areas, to the point where they’re practically unplayable outside of some ironic enjoyment. I know it’s become popular to call anything you don’t like “trash”, but if a basketball game ticks some or all of these boxes, then it’s earned that label.

1. Inability to Play Effective Defense

Just as the very best players in NBA history could get it done at both ends of the floor, great basketball video games need balance in their offensive and defensive gameplay. Obviously there are games that are skewed more towards offense, especially arcade titles, but they still allow you to play effective D. You can make stops when you need them, even if the style of play is more about fast breaks and high volume scoring than a slower-paced battle in the halfcourt. That indicates a well-made game. Conversely, a staple of bad basketball games is the inability to play effective defense, no matter how well you know the game’s controls and mechanics, or whatever tactics you try to use.

If you’ve played at least one truly terrible basketball game, you’ll know exactly what I mean. No matter how well you time a swipe, you’ll hardly ever get a steal that doesn’t feel like a complete fluke. Similarly, not only does attempting a block rarely result in a rejection, but it doesn’t even hinder CPU-controlled opponents, who drain shots at a ridiculous clip. “Great defense, better offense” is a thing, and it’s hard to represent it in video games without feeling cheap. However, in the worst hoops games, the only real defense is to hope that your opponent misses so that you can beat them on the boards, thus giving you the best possible of chance of winning what is a rather ugly shootout.

2. Clunky Movement & Mechanics

Basketball, when played well, is a beautiful sport. Play is constant and free-flowing as long as there isn’t an infraction, with the players doing impressive things from well-executed fundamentals to spectacular athletic feats. Therefore, unless we’re designing Peach Basket Ball Simulator 1891 – and you know, that might actually be quite a novelty – players should feel like the top athletes they are when we’re on the sticks. It shouldn’t feel like we’re running in mud or underwater, or trying to make a sharp turn in a Mack truck. Few video games benefit from stiff movement and janky animations, but it’s even worse when you’re trying to replicate a real sport played by pro athletes.

With broken and poorly-designed mechanics, nothing works as it should. Getting a hand on the ball for steals and blocks will be impossible, which often contributes to the aforementioned issue of ineffective defense. Players won’t jump on cue, or they’ll leap in the wrong directions. Rebounds will be impossible to grab. Dribbling moves won’t shake defenders, and it’ll be impossible to string together a smooth offensive play. Opponents will collide like tin cans, or get stuck to each other. The AI will be downright terrible. Simply put, there’ll be a court, a ball, and as many as ten players depending on the game’s rules, but it’ll hardly resemble a fun game of basketball.

3. Contrived & Unorthodox Controls

This often goes hand-in-hand with broken mechanics, leading to an all-around design disaster. It deserves to be mentioned separately though because a game can be kind of rough or clunky – or just outdated – but its controls are straightforward and work well enough that you can adjust to the feel of the gameplay. If the control scheme is utterly contrived, cumbersome, or needlessly different and confusing, then there’s no saving a game that’s a little rough around the edges. Even if a game is fairly technically solid – at least for the time it came out – unorthodox and bad controls can still detract from the gameplay experience, either because of a steep learning curve, or pure annoyance.

Again, this applies to other genres as well. In short, in a good game, challenge doesn’t come from the controls being poor or needlessly complex. If a basic move requires a button combination that resembles activating an old school cheat code, it’s not strong design. Likewise, if the approach to a fundamental ability such as shooting or passing the ball is unlike any other basketball video game for no reason other than to simply be different, and with no apparent benefit, then the developers messed up. You’ll find that bad basketball games try to “reinvent the wheel” instead of using mechanics and control schemes that have become the standard because they were the best solutions.

4. Poorly Designed Staples

Gameplay is paramount, but we do expect that basketball video games will include a few staple modes and features. These include season and tournament modes, roster customisation, rules and format options, and so on. I’ll also put functions such as making substitutions and changing team strategy options under this umbrella, too; basically, anything done via a menu rather than controlling a player on the court. Bad basketball games have a tendency to take a weird approach to these staples. Much like unorthodox choices with controls, they may be unnecessarily trying to be different, or the developers might not truly understand those functions and the needs of gamers.

Poorly designed season modes won’t account for aspects of the real NBA that we expect to see represented, from realistic player performance to proper formats. Bad roster management functionality can make a simple task such as changing the starting five or editing a jersey number more cumbersome than they need to be (or not even allow it, in the worst case scenario). Turning off automatic substitutions, changing defensive assignments, or setting other strategies will be a messy process (though to be fair, some good games have been bad about this as well). In other words, a staple of bad basketball games is failing to get the staples right, both on and off the court.

5. Impressive Bells & Whistles (That Are Soon Overshadowed)

One of the most interesting staples of bad basketball video games is that they can have terrible mechanics and controls, poorly-designed modes and features, gameplay that you just can’t make the best of, and very little incentive to play them, yet they’ll also have something really cool! In fact, it might be a better version of something that you’ll find in a far superior game, or something that you won’t even find in the best hoops titles. It might be excellent commentary and TV-style presentation, featuring some of the most famous voices in the sport. It might be a really cool instant replay feature, or a customisation function such as being able to edit the All-Star teams.

It could be a fun dunk contest, or some other All-Star Weekend event. It might be historical content, long before brand leaders such as NBA 2K and NBA Live back in the day were regularly including it. To that point, Konami’s NBA Starting Five 2005 – a Japanese exclusive that did not turn out well – had classic teams such as Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers, years before NBA 2K did! Over the years, bad basketball games have surprised us with a variety of extremely desirable features. The problem of course is that they’re quickly overshadowed by the game’s issues, which ultimately prevents us from being able to enjoy that cool stuff.

Have you noticed these issues being staples of bad basketball games? What are some other hallmarks of disappointing hoops titles? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

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