IN THE NEWS: The Best Sports Mod Ever Created is Back

Yes! Yes! Yes! After a hiatus, the best sports mod in PC gaming is back as HAWK23 made his return online and re-uploaded his fantastic Ultimate Base Roster (UBR) mod for NBA 2K14. It was unfortunate that I had to point several people towards the Ultimate Roster Base (URB) mod by skodam for the past several months because of the unavailability of the UBR mod. This isn’t intended to be a knock against skodam’s work. It’s just that I have always preferred the UBR mod. Needless to say, HAWK23’s return was a pleasant surprise last month. Yeah, the news is a bit old by now but because I was away last month, I wasn’t able to post on it sooner.

Reading HAWK23’s update on http://www.ultimatenba2k.com, he pointed out that he had a lot going on in his life during his absence. Because he left so abruptly and there was a lack of information regarding why he no longer had a website, YouTube channel, and Twitter, many in the NBA 2K community were genuinely concerned about him. While I appreciate his mod, this pales in comparison to his welfare as a human being. As I wrote about back in May, there is a lot more to life than video games. At the end of it all, video games are something that we are privileged to enjoy as entertainment. But it has never been a necessity.

So why do I refer to the UBR mod as the best sports mod? Because no other sports mod gives you nearly an entire history of a professional sport like this one featuring full seasons. It’s a video game encyclopedia of the NBA. When you think of the fact that the NBA came into being in the 1940s and just seven seasons are missing (all from the 40s and 50s) through the present day, that is a phenomenal amount of work and detail. The mod also includes ABA rosters, USA Olympic teams, and other specialty rosters. I appreciate that there was so much care put into this project that even the fact that even the difference between Magic Johnson’s goatee from the 1987 season to the 1988 season has been captured. Michael Jordan going bald in 1989 and 1990 is featured. Those little things stand out in a big way to me as a historical NBA fan.

One minor gripe I have with this mod is that certain players do not have their proper shooting form. For instance, the funky free throw shooting form of Bill Cartwright was noticeably absent when using a classic Bulls team. Byron Scott has some weird-looking shooting form on the “Showtime” Laker teams. Another minor gripe is that some of the teams don’t focus on their star player nearly enough. When I was recently playing with the 2005 Houston Rockets against the 2005 Dallas Mavericks, the CPU had Josh Howard taking 30 shots while leading scorer Dirk Nowitzki only took 11 (well short of his average of 19 attempts that season). Neither of these issues detracts from the fun I’ve had with the mod, but I believe some gamers would appreciate me pointing those things out.

Anyway, this is just a short post to announce that the UBR mod is back up. Being that the former post I’ve made on this mod was one of the most viewed since I began this blog, I thought it to be a relevant topic. If you are a college basketball fan, it may be worth your time to also check out the Ree Two Kay’s page on the UltimateNBA2k website as an Ultimate Base Roster is in the works for NCAA men’s basketball. There are already mods for the previous 2020-21 college basketball season and teams of the 90s available there as well.

Happy Basketball Gaming and have a great weekend.

-TVGA
admin@videogamersadvocate.com

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