While I appreciate all the effort put into the infrastructure it is ultimately meaningless. The peak amount of players I have ever seen online was twenty-two. No one is ever in any lobbies, so you can never choose a game based on signal strength. I have played through about six games online and only one did not have significant lag issues. I have been dropped from about twice as many games that were all extremely laggy. Once three games in a row dropped. The lag greatly affects game play; you often have a pass intercepted or a ball stolen and not see it. Your opponent just has the ball a moment later. The delay also affects your shooting motion and your defensive blocking and positioning. Most of the players online seemed to have a found away to exploit the online delay to their advantage. In a nutshell, the game looks and runs terrible online.
The biggest problem with the game however, has to be the controls. The game offers three control schemes: All-Play, Classic, and Advanced. None of them work that well. All of them use a mixture of button presses and gesture movements. The All-Play control scheme does not give you enough control over your players. The Classic Control scheme uses just the Wii-Remote on its side and does not have enough buttons to control a modern basketball game. The Advanced controls work best, it is essentially the two other methods combined. In addition to the bevy of control schemes you can turn on or off the Point and Pass Technique. With it on you use the Wii-Remote cursor to mouse over who you want to pass to. Without it you cycle through your targets with the control stick. Neither is satisfactory, both are too slow to respond. Your passes are frequently intercepted.
No matter what configuration you ultimately settle on the controls are infuriatingly unresponsive. You will often blow a wide open shot because your shot motion is jerky. You will even miss them using the Classic scheme because the shot button press does not always register. On all the schemes the steal and block moves are frequently mixed up. The rebound move never seems to work at all.
To add insult to injury the game also has bad A.I. Players will often stand there watching a loose ball or rebound go right past them. Sometimes you will have to force your player to stay on offense; they will automatically backtrack to defense after a missed shot. On defense your players will often go for an impossible steal that leaves your opponent open for an easy layup. Sometimes you will steal the ball near half court and be called for a bogus backcourt violation.
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