For fans of the NBA 2K franchise, this could either be the last chance they give this game or a new excited chapter in what has been the best basketball simulator for at least the last 12 years.
I’ve been playing NBA2K since NBA2K7. One thing that has remained consistent over that time and again in this newest chapter is the on court experience. You simply will not find another sports game that feels this good while in motion. 2K lets you decide exactly how you want to go about beating the man in front of you and then finishing the play. A combination of motions from both analog sticks and modifiers applied with the triggers gives you what feels like a limitless amount of options on how you want to attack any given drive. The impact of the moves will also change based on what NBA player you are controlling. Much of this will be familiar to fans of the series and rightfully so. Every year new animations are added and the game seems to be more sensitive to inputs allowing you even more control. All in all it creates an experience where you feel responsible for what happens on the court, the good and the bad.
The mode I spend most of my time in typically is MyLeague, and it has returned with a number of improvements that allow you to impress your vision onto the team/s you control at a level I’ve never seen in sports games. New this year is the mentor/mentee system. With this new feature, you can assign a player to mentor another one. You select up to three badges from the mentor that you want the mentee to train on. This allows you to improve your players faster, and add badges to players that wouldn’t normally have them in their progression path.
If you’re a fan of a rebuilding team like the Knicks it makes the first couple years of controlling the franchise a lot more interesting. Want Franky Smokes to build up on his offensive game? Pair him with Trey Burke and watch as his hesi-pullup jimbo game rises. If defense is more your thing, sign Tony Allen out of free agency, pair him with Frank, and resurrect Grind City in Madison Square Garden.
2K has also improved the system for injuries. In previous games, players had sort of a heat map of their injuries in their profile. This never seemed to carry much lasting impact in my time with the game. New this year is lingering injuries. A player may come back and be able to play but have a lingering injury until they are able to rest and fully recover. Toughness and injury ratings can also return a player to the court faster or slower than expected and all of this is also visible now. Injuries now can even impact development. If a player misses too much time in a year expect to see their rating take a dip in the off-season wrap up.
Another area that was addressed in MyLeague was trading and contracts. 2K has added traded player exceptions (TPE) and boy is it great. Now if you trade a player and get one back that makes less you will receive a TPE just like real life. The TPE can then be used in future trades to make salaries match. In previous games if you were over the salary cap you were limited to making trades where the salary matched or where you took in less than you sent out. All in all it opens the door to more player movement during the season without having to dismantle your team every time to make it happen.
More on what a TPE is (http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q85)
On top of all this 2K has added a ridiculous amount of customization options on how you want your MyLeague to play. Everything from adjusting the value of players in trades, importing player DNA into the draft pool to see prospects that mimic NBA pros past and present, to even more customization on the salary cap from last year and how it grows allows the truly hardcore to make their dream NBA scenarios play out here.
MyCareer is back and maybe the greatest addition to 2K in the last 4 years has finally landed.
SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES.
Since the story driven inception of MyCareer took off in 2015 it’s been synonymous with down right terrible cut scenes that were un-skippable. If this is your first run with MyCareer, you should go watch some scenes on YouTube from 2K15 and witness the hilariously bad voice acting performed by actual NBA players or the extremely awkward scenes where a player is talking to you and there is no voice, just text.
NBA 2K15 Cut scene Compilation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2wpIeZDrHE/
Things improved year to year as real actors were added and writing improved but most fans of the series would tell you it still has never been good. 2K19 is the best one yet, but the tradition continues of the actual scenes in the story portion being lackluster mainly due to poor acting and taking itself too serious at times. The good news is, on the court this is the best MyCareer has ever been.
Your career begins playing in China, making it to the G League, and working your way up to the NBA. You also have the option of skipping the story all together and starting in the NBA should you choose. Whether you choose to go the long route or get straight to the best league in the world, any story cut scene you encounter during this time can be skipped simply by holding down a button.
This is great news because I cannot stress to you how fun it is to play next to your NBA teammates in this game. Great players will play great regardless of you and so long as you can dribble and pass you are able to give your other less talented teammates plenty of chances to succeed on the offensive end as well.
NBA 2K has always allowed a great amount of customization of your MyPlayer and 2K19 is no different. Nearly every animation you can do on the court can be customized.
Maybe my only gripe with the MyCareer mode is that it really doesn’t begin to be as fun as it can be until your player is good. While you earn VC for nearly everything in the game it is an extremely slow road in reaching the point where you are truly making an impact and not being a drain on your team if you choose not to buy VC. That being said, making an initial purchase to get your player to the first level cap of 87 is more than enough to continue to have fun with this game. From that point forward you will earn enough VC from just playing the games to continue your progression.
Overall this is probably the most fun I’ve had with 2K on this generation of consoles. I love NBA basketball and this game feels like it was made for people like me. I’m happy with the changes that were implemented and recommend this to any one who is fan of NBA basketball as well.
MyTeam was not addressed in this post, as I do not play that game mode. I wouldn’t feel right giving my opinion on something I don’t have an interest in.
Critically Unfocused 