Ian Oosterbaan

After years of experiencing and playing 2K basketball games, I am just as disappointed with this game as I’ve been with every game since 2k17, maybe even more. I really just want a simple basketball game where I can play with real NBA teams and let my basketball knowledge and skill shine against players that aren’t as good as I am. I experienced that with 2K17, but since then, it seems every year that 2K has drifted further away from that possibility. 2K is completely geared toward MyCareer (the multiplayer “build your own” player mode) and MyTeam (the glorified arcade version of the game). All other modes are much less developed and almost seem like an afterthought. I used to enjoy running “Play Now Online” games in 2k17 back when you could throw nasty posters, shot timing actually allowed you to become a shooting beast and you could absolutely obliterate your opponent if you had skill. That was fun. Now, the game feels more rigged than ever. Has that ‘everyone is a winner’ feel where the game actually bends the dynamics of gameplay to favor one team/player or another. Either your team has the advantage or the other team does, and in the case where your opponent has the game’s favor, you don’t stand a chance, no matter how skilled you are or how good you play. The next gen version of the game’s career mode has a new, much larger park, which is nice. This doesn’t, however, change the fact that the career mode gameplay is garbage. 2K still hasn’t found a way to fix the latency issue where every button you push is delayed a step behind what’s actually happening. I don’t understand why they can’t figure this out. I have extremely high speed internet, and I’m not the only one who has this problem. I’ve never had such latency issues with any other game, not COD, not Forza, not GTA, not any other game. Just 2K. It’s really irritating and it just makes it nearly impossible to time shots correctly or play good defense, because no matter how good your reflexes are, the games reaction time to your commands will always be a step behind when playing online. On top of all of this, the my player builder is still garbage. I did the months-long grind to get my player leveled up and built out, only to get out there on the multiplayer courts and bomb. I had what I thought was a really clever build with a 92 3-point rating and a 91 dunk rating with all the nice badges to go along with it - only to find that a 92 rated shooter can’t make a dang 3 and a 91 rated dunker still can’t get a poster on an actual player after months of playing the Rec, 3v3 and 2v2 courts. Pretty disappointing. I had practically the same build in 2k20 and I could throw down Jordan Kilganon posters on 7-footers with a 6’2” player and shoot around 45% from three in multiplayer games. Now I’m practically worthless on the floor with the same attributes and the same types of badges. All-in-all, the 10% improvement in graphics on next-gen is not enough to make up for the lack of enjoyability in playing this game. It will just leave you frustrated and regretting spending your money on it. 2K is still in need of the big overhaul that they’ve been promising and still haven’t delivered. This is a game I play once in a while, and it’s usually just the play now online mode. Even then, I tend to play one or two games and get frustrated and just put it down. I think I’ll probably be deleting it from my console and won’t be purchasing another 2K until they’ve revamped this game from the bottom up to offer a better user experience where skill = wins.