

#NBA 2K19 COVER XBOX UPGRADE#
Players had to spend VC to upgrade their stats in M圜areer, but it took literally hundreds and hundreds of games before you could earn enough to make your player even half decent. This experiment came to a head last year when NBA 2K18 was rightly panned for properly taking the piss. The NBA 2K games have included virtual currency (imaginatively named VC) for a number of years now, and every year 2K has tried to push the limits of how intrusive they can be before there’s backlash. The only problem here – and it’s a big one – is the heavy focus on microtransactions. Oh, and Hayley Joel Osment is in it too, for reasons. This story is written infinitely better than last year’s dumpster fire, and while it’s initially a bit irritating how often your character whines about how his NBA stardom isn’t being handed to him on a silver platter, it all comes together in the end. finally makes his way to the NBA… but it’s the G-League, its minor league equivalent, where he’s playing alongside a bunch of other underachievers desperate for their big break. This time you’re playing as A.I., a young buck who fails to get picked up at the NBA Draft and finds himself in China slogging away at a Shanghai team instead (these matches have Chinese commentary, too: a nice touch).Īfter that, A.I. This year 2K redeems itself, because M圜areer is so, so much better. It also completely shat on the whole concept of working your way up from the bottom, instead putting you in the shoes of a DJ who takes part in a street tournament right at the start of the story and suddenly ends up playing in the NBA with very little effort. Naturally, it wouldn’t be a valid created character if it wasn’t my legendary creation Jake McPake

Focusing far too much on tone-deaf silliness and cringeworthy attempts to appear hip and edgy, jamming product placement everywhere it could and offering the most infuriatingly irritating ‘best friend’ character you could ever hope to meet, the 2K18 story was a real exercise in patience for me: a real shame, because it’s usually my favourite mode. Last year’s M圜areer was a low point in the series’ history in my opinion.
#NBA 2K19 COVER XBOX SERIES#
It’s more or less business as usual in terms of the actual basketball action, then, but fans of the series know there’s an aspect of 2K that changes wildly every year: M圜areer, the game’s story mode (which is incidentally celebrating its own milestone, marking 10 years since it was first included in the game).
#NBA 2K19 COVER XBOX TV#
This authenticity extends to the on-court commentary and courtside reporting: all of it feels real and all of it is a treat to watch and listen to.Įssentially, if you’ve never played an NBA 2K game before and you think FIFA does a great job of recreating a TV broadcast, watch the video review above for an example of how it should really be done. The studio team of Ernie Johnson Jr, Shaq and Kenny Smith recorded hours of pre-game banter, all of which feels natural and unscripted. The presentation side of things is still immaculate too: its attempt to recreate a real-life TV broadcast is so ridiculously detailed that it really blows everything EA has to offer right out of the water. That aside though, other than some new animations and the like it all feels largely familiar to last year’s game (which is to say it’s still brilliant). This year marks the 20th anniversary of the NBA 2K series, which started in 1999 with the fittingly named NBA 2K on the Dreamcast.įor two decades now developer Visual Concepts has been tweaking and improving its take on America’s third-favourite sport, and by this point it’s got everything down to a fine art: on the court, at least.Īt this stage NBA 2K is as close to a perfect representation of basketball as you can get, so it’s probably unsurprising that things don’t feel massively different this year compared to 2K18.ĭribbling past opponents has been made a little trickier, so you may need to adjust if you’re the sort who drives to the basket a lot.
