Review: NBA 2K7 (360)

There was something decidedly 'last generation' about the previous year's NBA 2K6, probably due to the many ported games that appeared on the 360 during its first six months on sale. Now that a whole year has passed, Visual Concepts have decided to get their finger out and provide us with a game that is both pleasing to the eye and also plays a great game of basketball. All is forgiven.

The newest trick learned by 2K7 is the "24/7 Next" mode. Here you create your own character and work your way up from the street to the real thing. Good at first, it soon becomes tiresome alarmingly quickly. Although you have various versions of the rules (one on one, three throw competitions, etc.), you have to rely far more on your CPU partner than you do in the other modes. The character you create is supposed to represent you and therefore you're unable to control your team mates and just have to hope that they make a run into space, which they almost never do. Most of the time Gamestyle resorted to just running at the defence in the hope of squeezing past or just went for the three point shots forgetting about our so-called team mate. Then there is the character creation, which, despite having numerous options, could still not create someone that looked remotely human. The one character we did make had a face resembling that of Sloth from the Goonies. 24/7 Next is merely an alternative, though; the season and tournaments are where the real single player thrills lie. The only downside about these is the sharp difficulty spike between Rookie and Pro. It almost feels like another difficulty should have been placed in the middle to make the transition smoother.

Like 2K6, the shooting is still mapped to the right analogue stick and works just as well as it did in last year's edition. In fact, as far as the core gameplay mechanics are concerned, nothing much has changed. Maybe this is for the best, because 2K6 did play well, and there is nothing much that could have been changed without risking the pick up and play nature of the title. Aesthetically, some things have been altered, with characters now looking far more like their real life counterparts, and with top class animations to boot. The terrible clipping of 2K6 has also been erased with the players now seeming like solid objects rather than ghosts with arms that can pass through other people. A shame that they haven't added the extra polish to the cheerleaders and mascots who, at various time outs, look like they've been cut and pasted from the PSone.

Visual Concepts have spent a lot of time recreating the feel of a basketball game with the decent commentary, replays and the half time analysis. The advertising may be a little over the top, though: not only do you have the "Gaterade around the cooler update", but also the "Toyota fast break cam" where the camera actually has the "Toyota - moving forward" slogan on screen for about two seconds before getting back into the action. Still, at least there's no spyware.

Most of Gamestyle's time, surprisingly, was spent online. We've recently come to think of online sports game as lag fests and a recipe for disaster; NBA 2K7 doesn't follow suit. You get four lobbies that you can join (Beginner, Advanced, Street and Custom for those wanting unranked matches) and, once you enter, you can challenge other players to a match. It's straightforward and you're given connection bars showing you how good each person's connection is. With a player whose connection bar shows for or five, you're guaranteed a lag-free match and it plays just as good as offline. The only hindrance we found were the free throws, which for some reason suffer from incredible latency making the pinpoint timing that they require almost impossible. Despite this slight fault, we can still see ourselves playing this game online for quite some time.

NBA 2K7 is your typical update. It may not revolutionise anything, but the improved graphics and online mode are enough to win over fans of the series. Not worth full price if you own the previous edition, but trade in 2K6, get some money off and then it may be a worthy purchase.

Rating: 7 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver