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!

1. Can’t Hide the Target Indicator and/or Other Overlays

Let’s tip things off with one of those annoying instant replay quirks that are the bane of anyone who wants to get a clean screenshot or video clip. In some games, it’s just impossible to hide the target indicator from appearing under whatever it’s focused upon. If your intention is to capture footage or a screenshot that looks like it’s from real life, it’s certainly distracting to see the indicator following players or the ball, or just sitting there on the court. Sometimes it’s possible to angle the camera in a way that hides it, but that won’t always be feasible (more on that in a moment). Oddly, a few patches for NBA 2K games have fixed this, only for the issue to return next year.

Other overlays have similar problems in specific games. An infamous example can be found in the PC versions of NBA Live 2005 through 08. In previous PC releases with screenshot functionality in instant replay, clicking the screenshot button captured the screen but none of the overlays. In the aforementioned games however, the screenshot button captured the overlay as well. It was possible to hide the overlay manually and press F12, though the button to display the overlay again could be seen in the lower right-hand corner. I ended up creating a workaround for this which made the “display overlay” button invisible on mouseover, facilitating cleaner screenshots and video.

2. Camera Snaps to Fixed Angles

The free roam camera has been one of the most useful additions to instant replay over the years. Indeed, when you go back to an old game that doesn’t have it, trying to get a good close-up is usually quite difficult. Of course, it’s not always easy with the free roam camera, either. NBA 2K in particular is rather controlling with its approach to free roam, as the camera will often still snap to what the game believes is a realistic angle. It makes sense in theory, but in execution it results in obstructed views and limited angles for close-up screenshots. Some NBA Live games have had similar quirks in their instant replay, or haven’t centred the target properly in the frame.

It’s even worse when there aren’t any height controls, though even those can snap to fixed positions, particularly in NBA 2K. This sometimes requires careful juggling of all the positioning controls, and even then, the camera doesn’t always stay in place when you play or rewind the clip. Sometimes you can get around these angles by targeting a spot on the floor and zooming in accordingly, though this isn’t always feasible if the target indicator can’t be hidden, or there’s depth of field that can’t be toggled. It’s why I really appreciate a free roam camera that truly is free roam, not to mention a working control to hide the target indicator and other overlays.

3. Imprecise Playback Controls

This is one of the rarer instant replay quirks, but it has shown up in a few games, and it’s always annoying when it does. A well-designed instant replay function will allow precise control over playback: play and rewind at normal speed, frame-by-frame back and forth, and in more recent games, variable speeds in either direction. There are a few games however – Fox Sports NBA Basketball 2000 is one – where it’s impossible to advance or rewind frame-by-frame. Instead, in addition to the play and rewind controls, you can move in short bursts in either direction. Sure, it’s accompanied by a nifty video distortion effect, but it’s much harder to stop on the frame that you want.

As I said, it’s fortunately one of the rarer quirks you’ll encounter, since instant replay is a stock feature with fairly standard functionality. As with the other annoying instant replay quirks I’m discussing here though, when there’s poorly designed and imprecise control over playback, you do notice it. Although it’s particularly annoying when you want to stop on a specific frame to take a closer look at something or to capture a screenshot, it also affects the ability to watch the action in slow motion. While it’s a generalisation, I’d say that when a title can’t get its instant replay playback controls right, you’ll probably find that the rest of the game is riddled with design flaws, too.

4. Changing Button Assignments

Admittedly, this may be more of an issue for content creators that frequently revisit a variety of games to get screenshots, but as I am one of those, I’m inclined to mention it here. Although the general playback controls and other functions may remain the same throughout the years, their assigned buttons have often changed from game to game. This hasn’t been a big issue for a while now, but if you go back and play some of the NBA 2K games from the late 2000s/early 2010s, you’ll find that some of the camera controls (particularly zoom in and out) jump around the different buttons. As such, you’re bound to hit the wrong button at some point when playing an older game.

I’ll spare you a lengthy diatribe about the frustration I feel when I’ve set up an angle that I like, only to accidentally back out to the pause screen because I’ve tapped the button to exit instant replay owing to it being zoom out in another title, or because I’ve moved the right analog stick. Suffice to say, it doesn’t fill me with cheer. It’s actually a symptom of a larger problem at the time, where it felt like some of the controls were changing on an annual basis. Basketball games have become more consistent in their controls and mechanics over the past generation, which is a good design philosophy in general. Instant replay controls also remaining consistent is a welcome by-product.

5. Inconsistent Net Movement

You may know exactly what I’m talking about from that title and the screenshot, but I’ll attempt to describe the phenomenon here. In some games, the net movement in instant replay isn’t consistent with the playback. For example, if you enter instant replay to watch a dunk in slow motion, and then you rewind to watch it again, you’ll see that even though everything else has been rewound to an earlier point on the timeline, the net’s movement is rewinding at a slower speed. All of the players are back where they were, but the position of the net still reflects what happens a few seconds later in playback. It’s one of the weirdest instant replay quirks you’ll see.

Fortunately, it has the easiest workaround of all the annoying instant replay quirks on this list. If you rewind far enough, the net will sort itself out (so to speak), catching up with the rest of the play. With that in mind, while it’s certainly strange, it’s not the most frustrating instant replay issue that you can encounter. It is annoying when you don’t notice it until you’ve taken a screenshot or captured video though, as it does stick out like a sore thumb once you’ve seen it. I assume there’s a technical reason for this issue, but again, at least it can be resolved without too much messing around or needing to mod in an unofficial fix. Nevertheless, this quirk can be annoying at times.

Do you recognise any of these annoying instant replay quirks? Are there any other quirks with instant replay functions in various games that you find annoying? Let me know in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Annoying Instant Replay Quirks appeared first on NLSC.