Gaming Target - Xbox: NBA Inside Drive 2002

Written by Andrew Smith on February 04, 2002

Full Review: Seems Microsoft knows more than just football.

Every kid grows up wanting to be a professional athlete, or an astronaut. As of yet, there aren't many good astronaut simulations out, so children all around have taken to videogame sports simulations to live out their dreams for the future. Sports series are extremely popular and there is a ton of competition in the market. On the Xbox alone there are five companies making sports games. All that competition should lead to better looking and more realistic games. Thankfully, this is the case with Microsoft's Inside Drive.

All that competition also leads to less kind gamers. Nowadays, if there is a flaw in the game you don't just have to live with it like we all had to do not that long ago. Today you can return the game and pick up one of the other four basketball games that will become available in the coming months. Fortunately, Inside Drive is not one of those games that you will be taking back to your local game store anytime soon.

Graphically, NBA Inside Drive 2002 sets a new standard for graphics in a sports game. You can see reflections off the freshly polished floor, players are modeled extremely well and take a striking resemblance to their real-life counterparts, and the stadiums also look true to life. The crowd is the only downfall in the game; they are somewhat of a cross between 2D and 3D. They do respond well to what goes on in the game, they just don't look all that good doing it.

The gameplay in Inside Drive is not groundbreaking in any form, but it combines all that is good within all the NBA simulations. The posting-up system is very much like that of NBA 2k2. You can break down players in the paint, make a move and dunk on them, or take a step back and fire up the fade-away. High Voltage made good use of the right thumb stick, using it to throw lob passes by pushing the stick in the direction of the intended receiver and pressing it in to complete the pass. These small things set Inside Drive apart from other games in the way of gameplay. Another great addition is on the fly play calling. This feature has been tried in other B-ball games before it, but coaching takes on a much bigger role in Inside Drive. The biggest downfall here is that there is no franchise mode. While that is very disappointing, it's not something that would keep me from buying this game.

The commentating is what really sets Inside Drive apart from anything we've ever seen. The commentators seem to be more in-tune with the game than any announcers to date. You will even here witty one-liners from them that are actually funny! Just like real announcers, they will occasionally go off and start talking about something totally off the subject of the game for two or three minutes, and then go back to giving the play-by-play. The commentating alone is good enough to deserve a play through.

As with all sports games, there is a ton of replay value to be had here. Though, like I mentioned, the amount of replay value is somewhat hampered by a franchise mode that comes up MIA. Either way, a couple 82 game seasons will take up plenty of your time to warrant spending fifty bucks on this title.