Heat vs. Clippers on the iPad 2

It’s hard to believe how many ways the iPad version of NBA 2K12 is broken; It feels like the most unprofessional, sloppy, haphazard sports game to ever bear the 2K Games logo. In most cases, the original Sega Dreamcast version of NBA 2K (from 1999, mind you) feels like a more competent, polished piece of work. Fortunately, lurking beneath the countless bugs and misfires is a single great idea with a decent implementation, one that actually feels like the first big leap in sports games in a decade.

But first, the problems.

• The frame rate often stutters, even on the iPad 2. It isn’t a huge issue when you’re actually moving the ball, but the replays and other bits of broadcast presentation sometimes devolve into jittery slideshows.
• A recent update promised refined player models, optimized for the iPad 2. And they were refined, but only in the sense that players have gone from appearing to be blobs of vaguely human-esque polygon putty to looking like neanderthals with gym memberships. Lebron James and Dwayne Wade look roughly like themselves, but Chris Bosh comes off more like a dead-eyed serial killer, while Dirk Nowitzki runs around with a blondish dinner salad where his hair should be. I’m just glad Yao Ming retired, because if he had been featured in this game, his head would have undoubtedly been rendered as a scowling, Chinese cube.
• The play-by-play, color commentary, and stadium announcers are so bad that they should have been excised from the title during testing. (Assuming anyone tested it at all.) And I’m not referring to the common struggle of all modern sports games to keep their commentary tracks rich and interesting. In this game, player names are shouted out randomly without context, sentences end abruptly, and one announcer routinely takes a moment after a blocked shot to tell us about Dikembe Mutumbo’s qualities as a shot-blocker and philanthropist. That last bit would be fine, except no one ever says the name “Dikembe Mutumbo”; dude just starts rambling on about finger-wagging and humanitarianism. But probably the best way to sum up the situation is this: in this game, Kevin Harlan can’t even get the score right half the time. The score. Just simple integers, voiced during timeouts or the end of quarters. I can forgive some slop in the act of real-time play-by-play due to the enormous number of variables involved and the speed of the on-court action… but simply calling out the actual score? That’s the easiest thing to get right, and NBA 2K12 gets it wrong.
• The game’s menu system is convoluted (a sore spot with all NBA 2K games of recent vintage) and tap-intensive, looking for all the world like something I’d expect to see running on a Nintendo DS. When your iOS game looks like it was meant to be navigated with a plastic stylus, you’ve failed.
• The first time a cutaway of a player jogging up-court after a score causes you to be hit with a five second inbounds violation, it’s annoying. Once it’s happened a few more times, you’ll be wanting to strangle the virtual camera operator.
• All of the above is somehow worse on the slower, memory-starved original iPad.

Now for the good news:

• The player models are animated quite well, and while there are glitches, and it’s difficult to distinguish a 6′ point guard from a 7′ center… they’ll do.
• This is the big one: 2K China has added a “one finger” control system to the expected, now-traditional virtual thumb pad. And while it is far from perfect, it is a giant step forward in the real-time control of a simulated sport. More than any other game in the history of the NBA 2K franchise, this one feels real. The new touch interface is designed to take the emphasis off a particular ball-handler and place it on exploiting picks for pinpoint passing and moving the ball to the open man. On the console version of the game, precise manipulation of a point guard or star player often leads to spectacular dunk after spectacular dunk, as the human-controlled played exploits the AI’s weaknesses. Here, with direct control limited to passing, shooting, and blocking, the game flows more naturally and realistically. There’s a “stick mode” for those who must have it, and if you prefer a one-on-one, break-down-your-defender style of basketball, you’ll undoubtedly want to use it. The “one finger” experience is more of a team thing, bringing the vibe of a real-time strategy game to the NBA game.