FanPost

Some things are wrong, just Wrong

Someone else has probably noticed this here, but I didn't catch it when they did.

In order to unlock the 1990-91 Blazer squad on NBA 2K12, you have to beat the 90-91 Blazers with the appropriate Laker team. It's like asking players of a super-sophisticated "Make The Star Wars Prequels Good" game to enter, via sadistic emotional linkup, the most emotionally scarred regions of their cerebral cortex so that they re-live the pain experienced at "The Phantom Menace" before getting a chance to re-imagine the outcome.

I didn't buy this game to play that contest the way it was! I bought it to play that matchup the way it would have been if I could substitute out Magic Johnson for Flatfoot McStumbly and get some virtual revenge. (The game should have screenshots of Jack Nicholson and Dyan Cannon hiding their heads in shame while Randy Newman sings "I Hate LA.")

Happily, I am awful enough at video games that I had to rig all the settings at the level of "Drooling Infant" in order to make this happen, so it didn't feel like I was looking forward to Magic nuking us once again. And now I can learn to play the game with the classic Blazer studs, and their (good or bad?) oh-so-short shorts.

I'm confident that, given enough practice, I can figure out the buttons in such a way as to have Clyde/Terry/Cliffy beat, say, today's Charlotte Bobcats. And I'm looking forward to when this happens after many fumble-fingered attempts at gameplay. (Maybe in a week or so; oh, heck, it'll take me 'till the Dull-Star break.)

But still. Curse you, 2KSports. Curse you to infinity for making me relive the days when we lost to the likes of Byron Scott. Why not stick the knife in further and add Kobe/Shaq's "OMG, we actually came back" moment, or Jordan's "I didn't know I could shoot 3-pointers" shrug? While you're at it, maybe include a "Be The Doomed Portland GM" feature where your acquisitions are either A) trying to sneak weed through an airport metal detector wrapped in foil or B) blowing out every shred of knee anatomy?

Even so . . . fun to see CGI versions of humans wearing the Blazer colors throw around an orange leather ball again. I didn't think it would happen this year.