NBA 2K19 review

[Mark-x]

 

 Basketball has a hard time garnering attention from UK sports fans, but while football games still struggle to nail the subtleties of their chosen subject when it comes to jostling, improvised finishing or increasingly prevalent shithousery, NBA 2K plays such a realistic game of basketball that, frankly, it’s a bit eerie to watch. The sheer quality of its simulation is obvious in every player-specific jump shot animation, every stutter-step, every gum shield hanging from a player’s mouth as they line up a free throw. All of it culminates in a virtualised sport that feels … human. Whatever you’re doing on the court, the nine AI players around you are generally doing an admirable job of behaving like reactive professional athletes.
Thanks to controls that have been continually perfected year-on-year for decades now, setting screens and pulling off pick-and-rolls is easily done, and a staggering range of context-specific moves and finishes are squeezed on to the controller. James Harden’s penetrating Euro-step is only three button taps away. Chris Paul’s no-look dishes are as easy as holding down a bumper and tapping pass. Steph Curry’s league-changing three-pointer is at your fingertips, too, slightly easier to pull off this year thanks to a new and improved shot meter. In its controls, animation and immaculate presentation, this is as good as sports games get.

The problem, for both 2K and for the player, is that all this has been true for several years now. Fans tend to take it for granted at this point that the fundamentals of the sport will be just about peerless. Yes, it can feel sticky at times, locking you into an animation that briefly turns you into a passenger until it plays out, but that’s the trade-off for mapping such a broad lexicon of basketball on to your controller. To make you feel like an elite NBA star, it’s generous about assisting your movements.

2K’s NBA series has been serving up a cinematic career mode starring recognisable actors since Fifa’s The Journey was a twinkle in an EA Sports developer’s eye. (One of them – undoubtedly the worst, as it happens – was even directed by Spike Lee.) Following aspiring NBA star AI as he struggles to make a name for himself in China and then G-League basketball in the ignominy of rural Indiana, MyCareer feels at times like a glossy Netflix series, and duly injects meaning and motivation into the many, many games of basketball you’ll play.

It can be a bit of a grind. Virtual currency, for which you can trade in real money, has crept into NBA 2K’s every nook and cranny like poison ivy throughout the last decade, and although last year’s game and the subsequent outcry appears to have been the nadir, it’s still a problem. It costs about 200,000 VC to upgrade your player from a 60 overall rating to an 85, and you earn about 1,000 VC from one game. Anyone hoping to compete online where 85 overall is the absolute baseline is in for either a long slog or £40-worth of extra investment.

With an air of inevitability, then, the strengths and weaknesses of this long-running and profitable franchise remain roughly the same as they have for years. What’s on offer is the chance to experience what it’s like to be a sports superstar whose off-court life is also artfully documented in cinematic sequences. The price to pay for that fame and fortune can get high, though, whether you trade away your time or your real-world cash.