I keep coming back to these games every couple of years because there's so much potential here and there's not really anything else on the market in terms of good basketball management simulation. While DDS:PB has come a long way in many areas, it remains an unpolished mess in many others, and it increasingly gives me the impression that Wolverine Studios isn't putting a lot of effort into improving the game over time. It is with great reluctance that I do not recommend this year's edition, because I desperately want this game - and its future iterations - to be good, but the problems are just too glaring.
My single biggest issue with DDS:PB is that the in-game simulation of basketball is not particularly representative of the sport it is trying to model. I can accept the herky-jerky, 2D style. Heck, I still play Football Manager in 2D mode because I really don't care about or for the animations and feel that I get a better representation of the actual soccer in the more abstracted, top-down view that series offers. DDS:PB, however, lacks animation entirely. The in-game representation of basketball is just a series of stills: the ball is here, then it's there. Players move from spot to spot, but they're really just jumping from one fixed possible floor location to another. And they're always attached to each other. While it may be modeled "under the hood", there are no double teams, or pick-and-rolls, or traps, or close-outs visible in the in-game engine. If a team is playing man-to-man defense, then defenders will simply move with the offensive player they are guarding ad infinitum. Help defense is mentioned in the play-by-play log from time-to-time, but you would never be able to tell from the animation.
What's doubly puzzling about this in-game stop-motion show you're watching is how time passes seemingly at random from one event to the next. In the most recent game I watched, I saw a series of three passes, each with a full step (complete with players changing location on the floor) in the step-by-step animation, that cumulatively took 1 second off the shot clock. At other times one step in the animation will take 4 or 5 seconds off the clock.
All of this would be, perhaps, acceptable given that the overall results the game outputs are very basketball-like. One reviewer points out that even the advanced metrics, at a season level, track well with actual NBA stats. That's great! The problem is, there are glaring issues with both the implementation of basic basketball rules and awful strategic and tactical decision making by in-game coach AI at the game-by-game simulation level. For example:
- The shot clock will reset even on a blocked shot if the offense 'rebounds' the ball. I have, in fact, never seen an actual shot-clock violation (or backcourt violation) across the many years I've bought DDS:PB and DDS:CB.
- There are times when the clock should be set to 14 seconds, per current NBA rules, when it instead gets set to 24.
- There are no jump balls aside from the start of the game.
- There are no loose balls mentioned in the play-by-play logs, or represented in the animation. Again, these may exist "under-the-hood," but you can't tell from watching or following the game log.
- Teams frequently make substitutions after a made second free throw (when they should not be able to).
- Fast breaks only ever occur after a steal. Never after a missed basket, much less a made one. And because of how these are represented it always looks like the entirety of both teams has run down the floor and gotten into position, so it's hard to know whether there was a truly free basket or if the fast break was contested.
- Quarters start with the ball being inbounded from the sideline instead of the baseline, for some reason.
End of quarter and end of game tactical logic is especially broken. Teams almost never hold for the last shot in a quarter, instead frequently taking shots with 6 or more seconds left. But this is OK, because teams that rebound the ball (or inbound it from under the hoop after a make) with 5ish seconds left often don't get up a shot of their own at the end of the quarter. I don't believe that heaves or half-court shots are even represented in the engine. At the end of the fourth quarter things get even worse. Teams will start intentionally fouling when behind by anything from 1 point to, roughly, 12. Yes, even down by 1 with 40 seconds left, a trailing team will sometimes intentionally foul instead of playing defense and hoping for a rebound. Even the real NBA, in which intentional fouling has become common for teams that are ahead by 3 (something I have not seen happen in DDS:PB), does not have this level of aggressive late-game fouling. Additionally, teams who have started intentionally fouling do not seem to prioritize fouling with players who have lower foul counts. I've seen teams whose best player has 5 fouls, with no one else on the floor over 3, use that 5-foul star to commit an intentional foul (thus fouling out) rather than literally anyone else. I'm guessing it's because the player he was guarding had the ball, but, like, you would just position yourself so that didn't happen in the NBA.
All of this is to say, DDS:PB suffers from its big-picture problem of choosing to represent a game as dynamic and movement-based as basketball with a series of point-to-point movements. But even more than that, it suffers from a distressing lack of attention to detail in its simulation. Getting basic rules implementation wrong, and having late-game decision making be so poor just makes the whole thing fall flat.
This lack of attention to detail shows up in other places, too. For example, when looking at the day's schedule, the away team's record on the road is displayed below their overall record, and the home team's record at home is displayed under theirs. The problem is, the home team actually displays their AWAY record, too. The UI is also very rough, because it's just not very flexible and it often fights against you. For example, there's no way to look at your roster's stats and player ratings without toggling between different screens. You can't manually change which columns are displayed on your roster screen as you might in Football Manager or Out of the Park Baseball. And heaven forbid you want to do a fantasy draft, because you will only be able to see each player's contract length and overall rating if you individually click on him and open his player page. There is no way to sort potential draftees by overall rating, or to see their contract commitments, within the actual draft screen.
Again, I want DDS:PB to succeed. I love the concept, and despite its many flaws it remains the computer basketball sim with the most potential out there. But until the underlying simulation and the presentation of that simulation is dramatically improved I don't know that I'll be returning to the franchise.
