Is NBA 2K16 One Of The Top 50 Games Of 2015?

After years of great promise and stellar action hamstrung by poor servers, 2015 is the year the NBA 2K series finally rounded out its game. The amount of content available in this title is staggering. Hoops fans can play one-off games online, build a dynasty in MyGM, play an online league in MyLeague, jump into the card-based team building MyTeam mode, experience the rise of hoops phenom “Frequency Vibrations” in the Spike Lee driven MyCareer, or take their created players onto the blacktop for online pickup games. All of this is buttressed by a best-in-class broadcast presentation and stellar gameplay. 

But with limited sports fans in the office, sometimes these games don’t have the political leverage they deserve in our year-end Top 50 discussions. To recruit another ally for the game’s inclusion and likely candidacy for the sports game of the year versus office favorite Rocket League, I asked Ben Hanson to step onto the hardwood and see why the sports community is raving about NBA 2K16.

So Hanson, what are your early impressions? Has a newcomer to simulation basketball, did you have problems picking up the game?

Hanson: Man, I have a lot to say about NBA 2K16. I’ve played around nine hours of the game on Steam and am really glad that I decided to give the world of simulation sports games another chance. NBA 2K16 is fascinating.

To answer your question, though: Yes. My first impression from this game was that it was overflowing with modes, it’s a hell of a package. There’s so many options on that menu, but not a single one was a helpful tutorial to the basics of the game. They have a freaking shoe-creation tool and yet don’t have a guided tutorial! They have four 60-second video tutorials with some NBA players mumbling their way through them. So when I play actual games I’m constantly left wondering “What am I doing wrong here? Why am I losing so badly?” I need some prompts and suggestions for how to improve or why my teammate is just standing there on the three-point line doing nothing.

Bertz: The tutorial (called 2KU) is really buried deep in that avalanche of menus, but the game also gives you options for practicing the basics without the pressure of competition in the freestlye and scrimmage modes. Why is that not shown to the player upon immediately booting up the game? As an annual player of the franchise I didn’t spend much time in the tutorials this year, but I remember in the past they had a relatively robust hand-holding guide that walked you through the basics of the dribbling stick, passing, calling pick and rolls, etc. Is that gone now? Tutorial aside, which modes did you end up touring?

Hanson: Well that’s a great first note to get out of this discussion on: I completely missed the extended tutorial. Tutorial aside, I checked out most of the major modes. It was surprising that the first mode in the menu was their “2KTV” video series. I watched a fair amount of them and the host seemed pretty alright, but the production of those episodes really impressed me. Is all of that effort in creating an in-game TV show really worth it? There was one episode all about the MyCareer story mode, but we’ll definitely touch on that later. 

I’m not a big basketball fan, but NBA Street is one of my favorite games, so I played a fair amount of the “Blacktop” street option. That mode gets a lot better when you find the option to play the game’s solid soundtrack during gameplay. The most fun that I had with the game was definitely playing local multiplayer with my roommate; going up against somebody with my same idiotic skill level was refreshing. 

The mode that really confused me was that “MyParks” option. It seemed like a great idea, but every time I chose it I was just running around in a giant empty warehouse. It looked like it was waiting for other players to join but nothing ever happened. I noticed that the Steam reviews for the game were “Mixed,” was that mode not working just a weird bug on the PC side of things?

Bertz: MyParks is where you can take your created player for 3v3 and 5v5 pickup games. What typically happens is you jump into the mode and see games taking place on all those various courts in the environment. You can run to an empty court or get into a queue to “get next.” This is a popular mode because you can earn experience for your MyPlayer to improve your skills or buy new clothing. 

The console courts were packed during my review and running smoothly. So you literally had no other players on the court? That means either no one in the PC community is playing (extremely doubtful), the servers are borked (not a widely reported issue but given VC’s past not out of the question), or you’re experiencing a PC optimization problem like a router port blocking the connectivity. Score one for the consoles! 

MyPark can be fun, but the majority of fans seem to gravitate toward MyCareer and MyGM. Let’s talk about your experience with these modes.

Hanson: I didn’t venture into MyGM because I hate numbers. As Beavis and Butthead once put it, “There’s like too many of them and stuff.” I imagine that mode is just one big spreadsheet.

By far, I spent the most time with the MyCareer mode. Or, as it’s better known, Spike Lee’s “Livin’ Da Dream: The Official Spike Lee Joint”. I finished the storyline in that mode and dabbled a bit in the “end-game” content where it feels like it launches you out into a normal sports game career mode. You mentioned that the post-story stuff was the best part, and I’m sure it’s all well and good, but let’s really dig into this Spike Lee nonsense.

They really go out of their way, both in the 2KTV show and from Spike Lee in the actual mode itself, to repeatedly call that storyline a “feature film”. Somebody on the show actually says the line “It’s a true drama and a true literal movie”, and then the host of 2KTV adds that “It’s more dramatic than other 2K games.” I’m sure that somewhere Ken Levine just had an aneurism. The entire attempt at shoving a story into the “MyCareer” mode is just a fascinating example of a big Hollywood name like Spike Lee not understanding the first basic lesson on the power of interactivity. The gameplay and cutscenes are completely disconnected and the story sequences are often just ten minutes of two characters in a car or sitting in chairs talking. I admire Spike Lee for experimenting with a new medium and I think that incorporating an interesting and interactive story into a sports game is a fascinating idea, but the structure of this thing completely drops the ball. What were your thoughts on the journey of the hero Frequency Vibrations and his best pal Vic?

Bertz: Livin’ Da Dream had several concepts I’ve always wanted to see explored in a more dramatic way – rising from high school through college and onto the pros – making tough choices about your life off and on the court, etc. But whereas I as a sports gamer wants to experience this via choice (think Mass Effect), Spike Lee isn’t used to operating on a two-way street. He had a linear story he wanted to tell, so he told it the only way he knew how. That’s the big missed opportunity here. 

In a video game I should have a choice of whether I stay friends with Vic or not, and I should be in control of how I respond to an owner who threatens me to stay in line, etc. MyCareer has always operated on this plane, but 2K16 went the wrong direction on player involvement. Until, that is, Spike Lee is done dictating the narrative and you are given more choice over how your character improves off the court, which endorsement deals to take, and how you spend you time off the court. That’s where NBA 2K16 takes the experience to a level unrivaled by other sports games. If the two were integrated more closely it could have won over even more fans, including those not normally drawn to basketball games. 

Hanson: Absolutely, there are a ton of blown opportunities in that mode. Just simple things like cutting to your family in the crowd during a game every once in a while would have been great or having a stresful moment in Frequency’s life affect his in-game stats. The game builds itself up as if you are going to be given that choice about Vic’s friendship and then it goes in its own direction which literally ends with a character reading from the world’s longest piece of yellow paper and staring directly into the camera.

With all of that said, I was shocked by how impressed I was by some of the performances. The characters all look like garbage (it’s an engine built for basketball, after all) but some of the natural dialogue and character personalities worked surprisingly well.

Since I was so terrible at the game, the story just grew more disjointed. Everybody in the cutscenes were hailing Frequency Vibrations as the next champion of basketball, and then it would jump to me running around in circles on the court, being ignored by my teammates, and fouling out of every game. The X button is just the auto-foul button, as far as I can tell. If you’re better at the gameplay, do they let you play more of those games or are do they always jump around between quarters like that?

Also, what the hell was that Gatorade icon that kept following me around the court?

Bertz: The Gatorade icon means you are fatigued and should probably come off the court. Once the disjointed Spike Lee experience ends, you actually play the full games. No more skipping through the season. Here you work begins in earnest to become an NBA All-Star, playing full games, earning more fans with your on-court  exploits, dealing with the media in post-game press conferences, etc. No other sports game has this kind of depth.

So given your problems with learning the complex simulation controls, getting online, or becoming invested with the MyCareer story, I get the sense this game didn’t resonate with you. With no basis of comparison with the second-to-none broadcast presentation, superior basketball controls, rich array of mode offerings, or deep MyCareer and MyGM modes (which I assure you rises way beyond “spreadsheets” by incorporating conversations with your front office members, players, and press), those standout aspects are lost on you, aren’t they?

Hanson’s Verdict: To some extent. The direct amount of evolution over previous iterations is lost on me, but coming in fresh still meant that I was blown away by the production. Strangely enough, the most impressive aspect of this game to me is the amount (and quality) of the VO. It always hit the nail on the head for when I made a miraculous shot or something very specific happened on court. I cannot fathom the amount of work that goes into that, let alone wrangling in the NBA players to record mid-game interviews and everything like that.

I respect the game a lot from my time with it, but ultimately this comes down to Rocket League vs. NBA 2K16 and my experience with the game doesn’t topple the impact of Rocket League this year. The scope of NBA 2K16’s production is amazing, but the highs and lows of minute-to-minute gameplay can’t compare with the fun of Rocket League. NBA 2K16 is an impressive sim, but a 100-year-old sport can’t compete with the tightly-controlling joy of rocket cars playing soccer. I’m a sucker for depth in simplicity, and I can’t give the nod to any other sports experience this year than Rocket League. Sorry that I wasn’t the FOF you were looking for.