Completion time: 3:14:00

When I first played NBA 2K back when it was released in 1999, I had a strong dislike for it, between the difficulty to drive to the hoop (which makes sense, it shouldn’t be easy, but it shouldn’t be a headache either) and how frustrating the AI was overall. I bought the game, and basically traded it back in the next day at my job. 20+ years later, I picked this up again only because I’m trying to beat every Sega Dreamcast game, and it reminded me halfway through why I disliked the game as much as I did, though with a bit more nonsense thrown in.

My first two series in the playoffs were decent. By the end of the second series, I was really starting to get into it, almost liking it. Then the third series started, and the bottom literally fell out from the game. It turned into a clown fiesta of no foul calls, wrong foul calls, magically overthrown inbound passes, nothing but three point attempts from the CPU, and more. At one point, I started attributing the fact that the ref AI was calling everything against me and all my easy shots were missing, was because I was playing the New York Knicks, and they are never supposed to win anything of importance. I’m pretty sure though that if I picked any other team, this abhorrent foul calling would have gone on anyway.

It’s a shame that the excellent audio, video and overall presentation gets overshadowed by just how bad the AI is in the game. Because of these frustrations, I feel that NBA Live 2000 on the PS1 blows this away gameplay wise and AI wise. It sucks that I have two more of these to play down the line, but thankfully the next NBA 2K game is scheduled about 100 games ahead, so I have plenty of hopefully exciting and actual fun games to play before I am forced to play the next one. NFL 2K this ain’t.

Rating: 4