For the past 8 or so years, 2K has basically dominated the Basketball/Sports genre, mostly due to the fact NBA Live has become total trash and no other company has challenged them for the throne since they fell under water. NBA Live has tried to make numerous comebacks but they have all completely failed but enough about NBA live. This year NBA 2K15 was glorified on the next gen consoles, taking advantage of the more powerful system, better graphics and just overall performance. They were able to take advantage of the Kinect and other features of the PS4 and Xbox One.
NBA 2K15 is an absolutely beautiful game. Each player look on point, from their face to their tattoos and the most important aspect, Lebron’s hairline. The game is reported to run at 60 frames per second, the different animations and physics in the game make it seem incredibly real. 2K listened to the 2K community in this regard in making the game seem as authentic as possible and the community has praised them for this. Although, there are still some details that they’ve messed like having duplicate players, the new face scan system has a large amount of bugs and using the same commentary as last years 2K.
2K’s soundtrack which the music junkie’s criticize the most is acceptable. It’s not as good as year’s past but you can stand listening to the songs without putting on your own music and muting the television. Now lets get into gameplay. Picking up controller and figuring out how to play the game is pretty easy. For the casual gamer, this is a huge plus that they can start to have fun and be competitive from the get go. The newly added shot meter has been loved and hated. This is due in part that some of the customized jump shots are now “broken”.
These “broken” jump shots hurt players that love My Player which I will touch on later but, when using a “broken” jump shot, your shots seem to go in once every fifteen or so times which becomes very frustrating because in the My Player mode, your shooting percentage falls drastically and now you have to spend Virtual Currency or “VC” to purchase a NBA players jump shot. Now what’s good about the new shot meter is that when you time the release right and get the line to stop in the middle, the meter turns green and that shoots goes in regardless if the defense is on you or not providing they didn’t block the shot which causes the meter to turn all red. The player movement is pretty smooth except for sometimes when the ball handler does a certain animation that causes them to dribble the ball weird and stop whatever movement you had going on. Another movement issue is on defense. When a user controlling the ball handler dribbles back and forth to get open and shoot a 3pt shot which nine times out of ten goes in and in the 2K community is called the “Zig Zag Cheese” the user controlling the defensive player can’t keep up with them and winds up allowing a open 3 pointer. This causes the user to allow the computer to defend the ball handler because they can keep up with them going east and west but when they attack the basket, the computer plays horrible defense, giving up an easy layup or dunk.
Aside from these glaring issues, the gameplay is pretty solid. A major issues 2K has had for years and has ignored the community on are the Online servers. Playing the MyPark mode is almost impossible even though they split up players into three different sections. The servers cause the players to extremely lag and most people don’t stay connected to the servers long enough to get into a game experience that lag issue. When the servers do decide to work, you can play solo with random people or team up with friends to take on other teams in 3v3 games. You can even play in the Jordan Recreation Center which allows people to play full 5v5 games with NBA rules. The only issue with playing with these random people are they make the game boring or not fun at all because they try to takeover and you never seem to touch the ball. Aside from these, MyPark can be fun at times.
The next mode is MyTeam mode. My Team is a card collecting type game that allows you to play games, open card packs and earn my team points to build your best team and pits you against other players around the world in a series of rounds as you move up to a higher seed. This is a very fun and innovative mode that is of course hindered by the server issues but isn’t the biggest issue. Some of the biggest issues lay within the mode itself. One big issue is how you earn My team points.
They provide challenges for you to earn points to buy more cards but these challenges don’t provide enough points for the type of challenges you have to do. You’ll wind up spending more points or VC to buy the cards that are required for you to even do a challenge then you’ll make for completing the challenge itself. The domination mode is fine but given that nine times out of ten, you never receive the best player on the team after beating the requirements for the game so it seems like a waste of time. Another issue is how they distribute Pink Diamond cards, the best cards in the game. These are only obtainable by putting in a locker code when they provide the card.
Receiving these cards are basically based on, if you follow Ronnie2K, LD2K, NBA2K, their twitch account or whatever athlete they allow to release the code on twitter how fast you can type the code in and if you have your app up or system on and 2k playing. This a very dumb system and they need to improve it for NBA 2K16. The last issue I have with this game mode is when the game developers decide to add new cards in the game who’s ratings are worse than the cards that were already in the game. For example, There will be a 94 overall player already in the game and then they’ll add the same player with only a 90 overall rating. This is a pointless process because why would anyone want the lesser card for a player in the game.
Although MyTeam is a very frustrating mode at times as is 2K in general, it still provides hours and hours of gaming and many memories. The next mode up is the MyPlayer mode. This mode was 1st introduced in NBA 2K10 and since has improved drastically. The best version of MyPlayer with all the newest features is only available on the next generation consoles. In the new MyPlayer instead of going through the draft combine or playing one rookie all-star game where you can initially earn VC and boost your draft stock to be a high draft pick, this new story causes your player to go undrafted and chose a team who was interested in you and try for them. Eventually you get offered a contract to remain with the team for the rest of the season after receiving two 10 day contracts.
The way you upgrade your MyPlayer has been changed instead of being able to individually improve an attribute, they have been grouped into one category such as shooting, defense, athleticism, etc. Sometimes I liked it and at times I didn’t due to the fact you can’t make your player exactly who you want. You may want your player to be great in the mid-range game like Kevin Garnett but not be a 3pt threat but this new system forces you to increase your 3pt ability even if you didn’t want to. One of the newest features that was a nice touch were the real voices of NBA players when they spoke in the game. Instead of last year where it was just subtitles, you see a real conversation occur between you and other players. Pharrell even lent his voice for his in game character.
The last mode I’m going to touch on is My GM. They improved this mode that they 1st introduced last year to replace the original Association. The conversations between you and other people is much more fluid and not just simple answers and a lot of yes and no’s. You can earn rewards even when you simulate games which wasn’t an option last year so if you wanted to maximize your rewards you had to play all 82 games which most people can never do. All in all My GM is a solid mode.
NBA 2K15 is a vast improvement from previous years and is still a very enjoyable game despite it’s many, many flaws. I do believe 2K can do better but because they have no competition to push them, they’ve been coasting with the same game for the most part for the past couple years. I will always love and hate 2K basketball with a passion but it’s my 1st love and I’ll continue to play it as long as I live. Overall, I give NBA 2K15 and 8.5/10
NBA 2K15 is an absolutely beautiful game. Each player look on point, from their face to their tattoos and the most important aspect, Lebron’s hairline. The game is reported to run at 60 frames per second, the different animations and physics in the game make it seem incredibly real. 2K listened to the 2K community in this regard in making the game seem as authentic as possible and the community has praised them for this. Although, there are still some details that they’ve messed like having duplicate players, the new face scan system has a large amount of bugs and using the same commentary as last years 2K.
2K’s soundtrack which the music junkie’s criticize the most is acceptable. It’s not as good as year’s past but you can stand listening to the songs without putting on your own music and muting the television. Now lets get into gameplay. Picking up controller and figuring out how to play the game is pretty easy. For the casual gamer, this is a huge plus that they can start to have fun and be competitive from the get go. The newly added shot meter has been loved and hated. This is due in part that some of the customized jump shots are now “broken”.
These “broken” jump shots hurt players that love My Player which I will touch on later but, when using a “broken” jump shot, your shots seem to go in once every fifteen or so times which becomes very frustrating because in the My Player mode, your shooting percentage falls drastically and now you have to spend Virtual Currency or “VC” to purchase a NBA players jump shot. Now what’s good about the new shot meter is that when you time the release right and get the line to stop in the middle, the meter turns green and that shoots goes in regardless if the defense is on you or not providing they didn’t block the shot which causes the meter to turn all red. The player movement is pretty smooth except for sometimes when the ball handler does a certain animation that causes them to dribble the ball weird and stop whatever movement you had going on. Another movement issue is on defense. When a user controlling the ball handler dribbles back and forth to get open and shoot a 3pt shot which nine times out of ten goes in and in the 2K community is called the “Zig Zag Cheese” the user controlling the defensive player can’t keep up with them and winds up allowing a open 3 pointer. This causes the user to allow the computer to defend the ball handler because they can keep up with them going east and west but when they attack the basket, the computer plays horrible defense, giving up an easy layup or dunk.
Aside from these glaring issues, the gameplay is pretty solid. A major issues 2K has had for years and has ignored the community on are the Online servers. Playing the MyPark mode is almost impossible even though they split up players into three different sections. The servers cause the players to extremely lag and most people don’t stay connected to the servers long enough to get into a game experience that lag issue. When the servers do decide to work, you can play solo with random people or team up with friends to take on other teams in 3v3 games. You can even play in the Jordan Recreation Center which allows people to play full 5v5 games with NBA rules. The only issue with playing with these random people are they make the game boring or not fun at all because they try to takeover and you never seem to touch the ball. Aside from these, MyPark can be fun at times.
The next mode is MyTeam mode. My Team is a card collecting type game that allows you to play games, open card packs and earn my team points to build your best team and pits you against other players around the world in a series of rounds as you move up to a higher seed. This is a very fun and innovative mode that is of course hindered by the server issues but isn’t the biggest issue. Some of the biggest issues lay within the mode itself. One big issue is how you earn My team points.
They provide challenges for you to earn points to buy more cards but these challenges don’t provide enough points for the type of challenges you have to do. You’ll wind up spending more points or VC to buy the cards that are required for you to even do a challenge then you’ll make for completing the challenge itself. The domination mode is fine but given that nine times out of ten, you never receive the best player on the team after beating the requirements for the game so it seems like a waste of time. Another issue is how they distribute Pink Diamond cards, the best cards in the game. These are only obtainable by putting in a locker code when they provide the card.
Receiving these cards are basically based on, if you follow Ronnie2K, LD2K, NBA2K, their twitch account or whatever athlete they allow to release the code on twitter how fast you can type the code in and if you have your app up or system on and 2k playing. This a very dumb system and they need to improve it for NBA 2K16. The last issue I have with this game mode is when the game developers decide to add new cards in the game who’s ratings are worse than the cards that were already in the game. For example, There will be a 94 overall player already in the game and then they’ll add the same player with only a 90 overall rating. This is a pointless process because why would anyone want the lesser card for a player in the game.
Although MyTeam is a very frustrating mode at times as is 2K in general, it still provides hours and hours of gaming and many memories. The next mode up is the MyPlayer mode. This mode was 1st introduced in NBA 2K10 and since has improved drastically. The best version of MyPlayer with all the newest features is only available on the next generation consoles. In the new MyPlayer instead of going through the draft combine or playing one rookie all-star game where you can initially earn VC and boost your draft stock to be a high draft pick, this new story causes your player to go undrafted and chose a team who was interested in you and try for them. Eventually you get offered a contract to remain with the team for the rest of the season after receiving two 10 day contracts.
The way you upgrade your MyPlayer has been changed instead of being able to individually improve an attribute, they have been grouped into one category such as shooting, defense, athleticism, etc. Sometimes I liked it and at times I didn’t due to the fact you can’t make your player exactly who you want. You may want your player to be great in the mid-range game like Kevin Garnett but not be a 3pt threat but this new system forces you to increase your 3pt ability even if you didn’t want to. One of the newest features that was a nice touch were the real voices of NBA players when they spoke in the game. Instead of last year where it was just subtitles, you see a real conversation occur between you and other players. Pharrell even lent his voice for his in game character.
The last mode I’m going to touch on is My GM. They improved this mode that they 1st introduced last year to replace the original Association. The conversations between you and other people is much more fluid and not just simple answers and a lot of yes and no’s. You can earn rewards even when you simulate games which wasn’t an option last year so if you wanted to maximize your rewards you had to play all 82 games which most people can never do. All in all My GM is a solid mode.
NBA 2K15 is a vast improvement from previous years and is still a very enjoyable game despite it’s many, many flaws. I do believe 2K can do better but because they have no competition to push them, they’ve been coasting with the same game for the most part for the past couple years. I will always love and hate 2K basketball with a passion but it’s my 1st love and I’ll continue to play it as long as I live. Overall, I give NBA 2K15 and 8.5/10