The NBA 2K series is one I look forward to playing every year; in my opinion, it is the best sports series currently being developed. Its gameplay and presentation are always fantastic, but when you’re at the top it can be hard to maintain that momentum. In this instance NBA 2K15‘s developers, Visual Concepts, have stumbled off the starting line, but I’m hoping they can pick themselves up and get the game back to where it should be.
As I’ve already stated, the gameplay and presentation are again high calibre in NBA 2K15. There have been some tweaks to the shot indicator system which now shows a metre below the NBA star to indicate when and where the player should be shooting from and releasing the ball. In previous NBA 2K games you would use the players animation to determine when to release the ball; this being at the peak of their shot.
As someone who has played a lot of the NBA 2K series I did find this new addition to be a little distracting to start with. I found myself watching the little bar on the screen rather than my player. However this change will help newer players to the series get a better understanding of the shooting mechanics in the game and for existing players it is possible to turn this new indicator off in the options.
Horrendous, unintuitive and boring: these are words I would use to describe the main menu system in last year’s instalment for current-generation of consoles. For this iteration the menus have been improved immensely. The first screen also now features clips from their new NBA 2K video series which will be updated often to give players a behind the scenes look at the game, as well as gameplay tips and interviews with developers and NBA stars. Another nice touch added to the presentation this year is that while a standard game is loading you’ll get to watch NBA sports casters Shaquille O’Neal and Ernie Johnson talk about a range of basketball topics loaded with their usual antics.
There have been significant changes to the MyCareer mode. This is where you play out the role of a rookie trying to make it big in the NBA. Most notably, they have injected even more story elements into the progression. You no longer start as a rookie who is drafted to an NBA team, instead your agent makes a massive mistake and you go undrafted, thus having to prove yourself before landing a contract with a team.
As you make your way through MyCareer, you’ll run into other NBA stars who are fully voice acted – as opposed to last year where they communicated to you through subtitles. The biggest change however is where you add new stats by spending virtual currency (VC) to improve your player’s abilities. You can no longer min-max, as the player’s individual stats have been bundled into groups of core categories. For example perimeter shooting, inside shooting, off the dribble shooting, etc. are now in a category that can be allocated points as a whole rather than to each skill individually.
On the court MyCareer, plays relatively the same aside from some small changes to the way you earn VC. My favourite being that you are no longer punished for a bad call to pass the ball to your player. But the most bizarre change in MyCareer comes when you are waiting to enter the game from the bench. Previously the game would allow you to simulate what is happening on the court if you were not playing at that time right up until you were called back in. Now, it simulates most of the game, but stops before the last play, so you have to just sit back and watch what unfolds.
The problem with this is that you know something is bound to happen because the game is about to put you back in; this means there needs to be a dead ball situation to get you on the court — like someone committing a foul, the ball going out of bounds or a timeout being called. What I’ve seen happen a lot is when the opposing team misses a shot and your team gets a rebound, they immediately call a timeout on the floor while the ball is in play. This would never happen. You don’t waste a timeout to bring in your 7th position rookie player off the bench. It then factors in towards the end of the games as your team runs low on the amount of timeouts they have left which should be used in important circumstances.
By far my biggest problem with NBA 2K15 has been the online functionality of the game. The online connectivity is an important part of the experience and has its fingers socketed in a lot of the popular modes. But since the game has launched it has been riddled with glitches due to server availability. Over the first few days there were modes that I was really keen to get into, but couldn’t because they were just unavailable.
Slowly, some of the modes started coming online, but as of writing this review a few components still are down. Moreover, there still appears to be some outstanding problems with the ones that have come back. The most frustrating of these being that on a few occasions my progress for the MyTeam challenges just hasn’t saved after complettion, so I’ve had to redo the same challenges a number times.
It’s disappointing that NBA 2K15 isn’t currently up to the standard we’re used to. As the modes have started to come back to life it has definitely smoothed out, but there is still a little way to go. Hopefully this is a lesson learned by Visual Concepts and next year’s launch doesn’t have so many headaches. The core game is amazing, but with so many of the modes relying heavily with online connectivity, which hasn’t worked, it’s just dragged the experience down a notch for me.
Reviewers Note: NBA 2K15 was reviewed using a retail PS4 copy of the game provided by 2K Games. Its online experience was reviewed at the level of service we received at the time of writing.
NBA 2K15
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