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With the likes of quality hoops titles such as NBA Live 2000 and Inside Drive 2000 hitting store shelves for the 1999-2000 season, the arena of PC basketball gaming has become more competitive than in past years. FOX Sports Interactive has followed up its solid NHL Championship 2000 with NBA Basketball 2000. Radical Entertainment, the developer, offers gamers several nice features in NBA Basketball 2000. While there is no career mode, there is the ability to play seasons of several different lengths, informative team and player profiles, and most of the players of the NBA.

NBA Basketball 2000 sports average graphics. Gamers who have played NHL Championship 2000 will notice that the interface of NBA Basketball 2000 is virtually identical. The game has a very “clean” look. The courts, crowds, and players are represented well, but are not spectacular. While many of the faces of the star players will be immediately recognized, many of the players do not look like their real-life counterparts. Additionally, the bodies of the players look a little odd in some instances. The framerate of NBA Basketball 2000 is good. I encountered little to no slowdown at the highest graphics settings. The player introductions are a nice touch, and the showing of highlights on the jumbotron at the end of each quarter is a cool touch. The commentary is handled by Greg Papa and Doc Rivers. Both men do a credible job, but like most games, the commentary becomes repetitive. The in-game sounds are spot on and sound great.

The gameplay is where NBA Basketball 2000 loses serious points. While the game plays exceptionally smooth, the AI is very poor. From clock management to the defensive AI, I am amazed at how pitifully the CPU opponents execute in this game. I boosted the difficulty setting to the highest level and still found it easy to drive to the hoop for an easy basket the majority of the time. The sad thing is that any player can score at will. I can understand Allen Iverson being able to cut to the hoop and score on a regular basis, but not bench players that are slow as snot in real life. I played several games in which I did not drive to the hoop at all and found that the AI is still horrible. For some reason, the defensive AI looks more like the UFO defense of the Cleveland Browns than the defense observed in the NBA. I could reel off dozens of specific examples of the failure of the defensive AI, but will spare you the pain of reading a laundry list. Let us just say that the AI is wretched.

Aside from the AI, many other aspects of NBA Basketball 2000 are poorly implemented. The season statistics are off of the actual NBA. Obviously, the user’s stats will be inflated due to the poor AI, but the simulated stats are off as well. Also, the stats presentation has some problems. First, category totals are shown, but not averages per game when accessing player stats. Not offering points-per-game or rebounds-per-game is inexcusable. Second, only the league’s top ten leaders are shown. Surely it is not that hard to allow gamers to see leaders beyond the top ten. At least per-game averages are categorized on the league leaders screen, unlike on the individual players’ stat screens.

It is hard to recommend NBA Basketball 2000 to hoops gamers at a time in which other titles have so much more to offer. FOX Sports certainly has a nice base title to improve upon in the future with NBA Basketball 2000, but the poor AI and lack of features make this title come up short of the rim this time around. It is sad that a game that has such smooth gameplay and nice presentation turns out to be a total stinker in the AI department. That being said, I am happy to see the likes of Microsoft Sports and FOX Sports Interactive enter the fray of PC sports gaming. More competition will only breed increased creativity and better games for the consumer. Radical Entertainment is a good developer and I truly hope that the folks at Radical will release a much-improved version of NBA Basketball next year. If significant changes are not made, then NBA Basketball from Radical needs to be canned.