Review: High-flying ‘NBA 2K17’ has a career year.

The 2015-2016 season was a treat for NBA fans. In the final weeks alone, we marveled at the Warriors breaking the all-time regular season win record, held our breath through countless playoff nail-biters, and lost our minds when LeBron “King” James reminded us why he got his particular nickname. I’ve been watching the NBA for several decades and can’t remember a more thrilling (and, as a Bay Area guy, saddening) end to a season.

But it wasn’t an especially good year for the best basketball video game series on the planet. While “NBA 2K16” still ranked head and shoulders above the competition, the franchise had a rare misfire thanks to a dud of a Career mode and some uncharacteristic technical woes. What would it do in the offseason to improve?

What any superstar would do, naturally: practice, practice, practice. And that’s exactly what you’ll be doing in the gorgeous, grinding “NBA 2K17.”  Righting several mistakes from last year’s game, this is a stunning, robust basketball sim that smooths out rough spots, is replete with modes, and delivers a painstakingly authentic experience from start to finish.

Career counseling

It’s immediately clear that developer Visual Concepts listened to complaints about last year’s insipid, Spike Lee-directed MyCareer debacle, because the game’s flagship mode now features a much tamer story.

Written by Aaron Covington, the man behind the movie “Creed,” the new MyCareer in “NBA 2K17” lets you guide the annoyingly nicknamed scrub “Pres” (short for, I swear, “The President”) from college to the pros, leveling up skills and negotiating the usual assortment of distractions along the way, including agents, endorsements and enough unskippable cut-scenes to drive a game reviewer crazy. It’s solidly done, though I feel a little weird about the fact that my player was deemed good enough to be taken #17 in the draft, essentially erasing the very existence of Vanderbilt’s Wade Baldwin IV. Sorry Wade.

But there’s another cool wrinkle in this rags-to-riches tale: a partner. You’re joined in your baskeball journey by fellow rookie Justice Young (played by Michael B. Jordan). Rather than serve as an obvious foil, Young becomes the Klay Thompson to your Steph Curry. Over time, the two of you develop an off-court rapport that has a tangible on-court effect. Eventually you’ll control both players at once as a nearly unstoppable pick and roll nightmare. It’s great fun and reinvigorates the mode.

MyCareer needs that boost of energy, too, because while it hits the right notes, it feels like more of a grind than ever before. You earn the game’s virtual currency (called, no joke, Virtual Currency) at a glacial pace, and the experience between games is surprisingly mundane.).

You’ll occasionally text acquaintances and work out shoes deal, but mostly, you’re encouraged to hit the gym. There are rewards for this – you can earn a meager batch of VC by shooting around and eventually gain skill points directly through copious practice mini-games – but as in the real-world, it takes serious focus to deal with the repetition of drills.  If the goal was to emulate the grind of a new player struggling to adapt to the NBA, mission accomplished. I’m just not sure that particular goal needed achieving.

And technically, you don’t need to struggle. You can buy your way to the Hall of Fame through VC micro-transactions, a pretty lousy (if widely accepted) move for a $60 game. I’m not a fan, though I suppose enough of you are that 2K sees value in the pay-to-improve formula.

Smooth moves

By and large, though, MyCareer is a step in the right direction, partly because the core gameplay is better than ever.  Right-stick moves have been freed up from the lengthy animations that used to make it hard to really string together jukes. It’s more organic now; in the right hands, a player with tight handles like Damian Lillard becomes an ankle-breaking force of nature.



By Ben Silverman.
Culled from Yahoo News.