NBA 2K15 Review - All the Right Moves

Now in its second year on current-generation hardware, part of me expected the latest NBA 2K to make substantial visual leaps from its predecessor. Though obviously 2K15 wouldn’t best last year’s edition in terms of bulking up on polygons (the jump from old to new hardware is far too great to try and emulate year-over-year), perhaps the fuzzy-looking beards and impressively-mapped faces in screenshots had me believing that 2K15 would bump shoulders with the photorealism we’re all hoping to finally have someday. That day hasn’t quite arrived, but NBA 2K15’s substantial tweaks and improvements to both offensive and defensive play make it well worth any fan’s while — and that’s before trying out its new gameplay modes.

The first thing you’ll notice upon hopping into a standard exhibition are the varied options available to you when running your offense. Though far from being a game I’d call “highly technical,” NBA 2K15 is now heavily focused on managing and dishing out instructions. Cuts, picks, specific motion patterns, and more are selected and executed from the comfort of the Dualshock 4’s D-pad, and though I found the wealth of options overwhelming at first, my worries were soon put to rest once I was successfully setting up teammates for wide-open jumpers and traffic-free lanes to the basket. Does all of this mean that you can no longer run aimlessly like a madman until a layup opportunity presents itself? No, you can still do that. But it’s going to be both more difficult and less enjoyable than strategizing with the other four guys on the floor.

Meanwhile, defense has seen a pseudo-overhaul as well, though it’s difficult to say outright whether or not the changes are 100% welcome in this case. Right off the bat, it’s clear that defense is far more realistic than it’s ever been, and you can no longer just zone out or half-ass it until you regain possession of the ball. If you slack on D, the opposing team will light you up, regardless of who is or isn’t on the roster.

With practice I became a decent defender, and the continuous effort toward balancing aggressive D with conservative basket-protecting is one that you can become skilled at but never quite master — just like the real thing. My one issue with this is that certain opponents, no matter how savvy you think you’ve become, simply can’t be consistently defended. I couldn’t for the life of me find a way to shut down Lebron James without double-teaming, and though that’s probably an accurate reflection of real life, I should be able to keep him contained with man-to-man if my input skills facilitate doing so. From what I can tell, Visual Concepts decided early on that they didn’t want that happening.

All in all, both defensive and offensive play have taken on an impressive flow and “smoothness” that, while not always perfect, have altered the 2K experience for the better. Offense is a joy once you get the hang of it — I look forward to further tweaks to the defensive experience with next year’s edition.

As usual, NBA 2K is loaded with various play modes, with the returning MyCareer front and center among them. You’ll create a player and optionally scan in your face (via Kinect or PlayStation Camera), and from there the process is rather straightforward. Though I was impressed with the amount of fine-tuned detail my created avatar possessed, this is no “Create-A-Sim” either. If you really analyze the graphics on your player up close they don’t consistently impress, and rapidly altering facial features only draws attention to that fact. I’d recommend you take player creation as a fun activity to prep your for the main course, and nothing more.

True face scanning is finally here! Not creepy at all.

Luckily, other areas of MyCareer have been greatly improved, so much so that I found it slowly becoming my favorite mode the more I played. There’s still a “story” shoehorned onto the experience, but it’s a more relatable one — a tale of proving yourself. In-game conversations with coaches or members of the press manageto not feel ridiculous, and stat gains have been simplified to manageable and well-known sliders, eliminating the need for mental math or planning too far in advance (if I wanted talent trees I’d play World of Warcraft). The way defense works is especially fitting in MyCareer — want to make it with the big boys? You’d better play like The Glove every time down the court, because important characters are watching, and the blink of an eye could send the man with the ball flying straight past you.

I was especially excited to try this year’s MyPark mode, and though the idea is as fresh as ever, I found the novelty wearing thin more quickly than I would have hoped. Essentially, this is an online mode that lets you play on non-NBA street courts and battle for “rep” via pickup games, and though it succeeds as a fun change of pace, internet ball-hogs can sometimes spoil the experience. Games have been capped to 15 points to minimize wait times, but the more I played, the more I unfortunately felt drawn to standard online exhibitions. I plan to experiment with MyPark more, but your mileage is probably going to vary.

MyLeague is interesting and impressively massive in scope, allowing you to create and run a basketball association and make decisions concerning every last detail. The most impressive part? Your creation, if managed properly, can potentially operate for up to 80 years. You’ll control how the draft is run, what your league’s salary cap ought to be, how many games in a season — and the game allows you to select hilarious extremes too. I had the most fun toying with absurd league rules, but if you’d rather play MyLeague like a realistic simulation, you’ll have just as much fun doing so.

Unfortunately, despite having high hopes for MyTeam mode due to its certifiably epic teaser trailer, I found it to be the least interesting of all that I tried. Card-powered mechanics return, and though real-time buying and selling is a nice touch, it doesn’t go far in terms of making the core gameplay of this mode truly great. The same can be said of MyGM, which feels a bit under realized here, and despite both modes allowing for the use of real money to speed things along, I was never engaged enough to actually entertain the idea.

Thankfully, the pros do outweigh the cons this year, and just like last year, 2K is going to be a tough package to beat. Defensive quirks and a few underdeveloped modes aside, MyCareer is a serious time sink that will net your hours of enjoyment, while the changes made to offensive play (and the resulting silky-smooth authenticity) are on the bleeding edge of where basketball video games ought to be going. If you’re a yearly NBA 2K player, then you’re probably already buying this . If not, 2K15 is as good an entry as any to take for a spin.