No one likes to win a battle without a fight. It doesn’t prove anything. NBA 2K6 resoundingly wins round one of the next-gen battle for simulation basketball. And all they had to do was show up at launch. This is because most of NBA Live 06 is just not there in EA’s first baller for the 360.
If you have a HDTV and are looking for a deep NBA experience, you will be in heaven with 2K Sports’s latest. If you only have Standard Definition you will not see a big jump from the Xbox version of the game. In fact at Standard Definition you will find the left and right portions of the screen get cut off. This shows mostly in the menus, but you are missing part of the frame because this game (like all 360 games) is meant to be experienced in full HD.
But even in Standard Definition the cut scenes and close ups of the players look better then the PS2/Xbox version of NBA 2K6. Visual Concepts crammed more animations, cloth and sweat simulation, and high-resolution player textures into the game for their 360 debut. The jerseys and shorts are animated separately from the players, which gives a more lifelike feel to the game.
The higher polygon player models are so good looking that now it is easy to spot slight flaws - some of the skin textures have a plastic or procaine look. Most of the time you will not notice this though because the game looks like a NBA telecast, and runs at a silky smooth frame rate. Even online, no latency issues were found.
The new player models show off another flaw in the game. The models for coaches, cheerleaders, and fans are of a much lower polygon count, and the textures are not as crisp either. They upgraded the players from the Xbox version, but forgot about the rest. This is a little jarring when you see players in a huddle around the coach.
The player models might be the new watermark, but that is not the only thing that shines in the presentation department. As with a number of launch titles, NBA 2K6 takes full advantage of Depth of Field blur. This means the camera will focus on the player in the foreground and blur out the fans and other players in the background. This blur makes the game look spectacular.
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