ESPN NBA Basketball has taken the art of branding to a whole new level. Not content with just draping the logo everywhere, the feel of SportsCenter is everywhere, from fonts to announcers to the music and game introduction. The graphic polish isn't just limited to the front end - the player models are easily the best yet on any system. Detailed facial textures and bumpmapping bring each player to life, and very few of them suffer from the plastic look all too familiar in next-gen modelling. Player faces and tattoos are fairly accurate, with the occasional exception among the lesser names of the league. Clothing flows according to player movement - it's very apparent while watching the replays - while the lighting has been tweaked nicely to compensate for last year's somewhat darker arenas. All in all, ESPN NBA Basketball looks the best out of all the current basketball games on the market.

Gameplay is where things take a wrong turn. Last year's ESPN NBA provided a great simulation-style of play, more deliberate and a better representation of the half-court oriented offenses so prevalent in the NBA today. In NBA Basketball, however, gameplay feels slightly more arcade-like, and for a series that's prided itself on a realistic look at the NBA, that's not necessarily a good thing. One puzzling example of gameplay gone wrong is the fast break - instead of being limited to speedy teams like Dallas or Sacramento, they're all too prevalent now, even on teams that should be much slower. Related to this, a major irritant introduced in this year's version is players stopping during the fast break to receive a pass, instead of catching it in the rhythm of their run. It's unrealistic, it's a pain in the ass, and it didn't happen last year. Several games into a franchise season, I can count on one hand the number of times a player caught the ball in a fast break during the transition without stopping. Not cool at all. You like blocks? You'll like ESPN, then - the default settings are absolutely ridiculous, with double-digit block games to be found everywhere. Adjust those gameplay sliders, people.

Sega's borrowed EA Sports' Freestyle function, and called it IsoMotion. Marketing lingo aside, linking moves like the crossover to the right analog stick is a good idea, in theory, but the implementation here varies. Using a player like Vlade Divac to try and crossover a two guard will usually result in a charging foul or steal for the opposing player, as it should. A wicked handling player like Allen Iverson should be able to break the ankles of nearly anyone in the league, but it's all too easy to run into a charging foul while using IsoMotion, even against average defenders. Calling for an isolation play with good guard against a so-so defender should give the advantage to the offense, but I was routinely able to block out the ball handler and draw the charge with little effort. At first, I thought it was just a quirk of the CPU artificial intelligence, and took the game online to test out my theory. There, I was able to foul out my opponent's Allen Iverson using Shawn Bradley (!!!!) to draw the foul, much to the chagrin of my Xbox Live opponent. You'll definitely be forced to make adjustments in the options to compensate for the settings. Another complaint I have regarding IsoMotion is the canned animation it uses - you have to wait for it to complete before passing or shooting out of the offensive move. This is also an issue with last year's NBA Live, to be fair, but it'd be nice to be able to imediately flip an alley-oop during the crossover animation.

The set plays, both offensive and defensive, provide a good judge of just how strong your team's capabilities are. Whether running a 2-3 zone, waving off your teammates for an isolation offensive play, or staying on a hard man-to-man, you need to ensure that the correct player is in place for the job. Creating mismatches off the screen is a great way to get a man open, and funnily enough, the defensive CPU will back off offensive players with low shot ratings, essentially daring them to make the tough shot. Very cool, and it allows for some good double-teams if you spot the opportunity. I did find a hole when running a half-court trap against the CPU offense - it's all to easy to force the point guard to the side and lock him there until he coughs up the ball or steps out of bounds - but at the higher difficulty levels, this doesn't happen as much. Stay away from the money play unless you're up against a human opponent, where it won't work anyways. Speaking of gameplay bugs, I've experienced a weird bug where I'd send the ball into play, and the player catching it would be stuck in the IsoMotion animation - forcing me to pass the ball or have the guy run out the clock! This has happened a number of times and really sucks the fun out of the game. Inbounding the ball shouldn't be a crap shoot.

Online play on Xbox Live is smooth as butter. I'll expand more on this in my Xbox Live Sports Special tomorrow, but I experienced no dropouts or lag through several games, even against opponents I knew from across the continent. Without support for online leagues, however, the Xbox version of NBA Basketball comes up short. Why Sega can provide leagues for PS2 - and Microsoft does it for NBA Inside Drive on Xbox - this is absolutely inexcusable on Sega's part. More on this later.

24-7 Mode is a whole new way to experience create-a-player, and one of the most innovative additions to a sports game I've seen in years. By making your own avatar and running him through different tests, you increase his shot percentage, defense, blocks and other player ratings, and earn new unlockable goodies like clothes and accessories. The 24-7 actually refers to being online as much as possible, because certain challenges are only available on certain times and days - miss it, and it's gone. You also need to practice with your 24-7 player whenever you can, because left idle, his skills will deteriorate. While some may argue the wisdom of a game that forces you to play all the time, even when you might not be inclined to, Sega's definitely created an innovation here that other games would do well to template from. RPG-style levelling up in a sports game, who would have thought?

Camera work in ESPN NBA Basketball is, in a word, weaksauce. Last year's version allowed you to rotate the camera to a comfortable angle, and I can't get into the game because no matter the preset, the camera is too far away. A lot of the angles in previous versions have been removed, and there's no reason for this. Bad job, Sega - go talk to the NFL and NHL development teams for a crash course on how to set camera correctly.

ESPN NBA Basketball is a great-looking game, with a solid gameplay foundation down deep. It's the bugs, the lousy camera, the lack of online leagues for Xbox and absolute necessity to adjust all of the gameplay sliders to find that decent game that shoots the overall score way down. Quality control means more than ensuring that all of the player faces are accurate, Sega - it means fixing showstopping bugs, providing camera work that allows players to enjoy the game they paid for, and providing league support to everyone, not just Sony. In the end, Visual Concepts and Sega have no one to blame but themselves for the bar being set so high - here's hoping that next year's version returns to the standards that we're used to seeing from the ESPN series.