Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five annoying quirks with instant replay in various basketball video games.
If you had to name the key components of a basketball video game, or any sports title for that matter, instant replay would definitely be on that list. Of course, it’s also very easy to skip over, as it’s a function that we sometimes take for granted. We certainly notice when it’s absent though, as was the case in the Xbox 360 version of NBA Live 06. Whether we want to re-watch an incredible play again and again from different angles, capture a video or screenshot, or take a second look at something that didn’t seem right, it’s great that we can pause and rewind the last minute or so of the action.
Because there doesn’t need to be much depth to the functionality of instant replay, it hasn’t really changed much throughout the years. For the most part, that hasn’t been a problem. However, the lack of innovation in the instant replay functions of basketball games has resulted in a few annoying quirks continuing to pop up through the years. We can usually work around them and they’re not necessarily big problems if you aren’t a content creator. Nevertheless, I imagine that long-time basketball gamers will recognise the annoying instant replay quirks that I’m describing here today. With that being said, let’s roll it back and take another look at them!