In lots of ways, NBA 2K18 is much more show than substance. While MyCareer has seen a large aesthetic improvement in terms of the new Neighborhood shared world and more involved cut-scenes, the core gameplay is still the same. Add to that the truth that, at every opportunity, it seems like developer Visual Concepts is telling you you need to spend some money to earn money, and also you start to seem like you're spending more time around the bench than on a legal court.
It does not help the other the game of basketball is better than it has been in a while and, in some ways, more fun to play. To become fair, NBA Live 18 stole a lot from NBA 2K18, as a result of its basic controls, to regain its reputation like a respectable basketball sim. And while NBA Live 18 features its own philosophy towards microtransactions, it never lost sight of their commitment to making its core gameplay fun. The same can not be said about NBA 2K18.
Offense is really as fun as always in the latest NBA 2K game. That is because it had been fun in NBA 2K17, and Visual Concepts smartly changed very little. Stringing moves together still feels fluid and much more controlled within this year's installment, and once you receive the rhythm down for shooting the ball, hitting threes and long jumpers is really as satisfying as other things in games.
But NBA 2K18 drops the ball in defense. I probably wouldn't have noticed how sloppy defense felt in NBA 2K18 if NBA Live 18's defensive gameplay wasn't such a revelation. Adopted its own, playing defense in NBA 2K18 feels loose yet serviceable. When my defense stopped working, I very rarely felt like it was the game's fault. But defense in NBA 2K18 continues to lack depth and engagement. It just didn't feel like I'd many options apart from sticking with my assigned coverage as well as I could (which sometimes meant fighting the somewhat floaty player movement). Obviously, sticking with actual players with vastly superior speed attributes in 3v3 games is a lot less manageable than sticking with CPU players, which is where the defensive gameplay really shows its biggest flaw, that is that it's much too easy to manage other players and there's nothing to help out players who might be a new comer to the series.
But let's be genuine here: NBA 2K continues to be just as much about its presentation and its features as it is been about actually playing basketball. This truth about the series has not been more obvious than in NBA 2K18, where MyCareer has got a significant facelift by means of a shared world called the Neighborhood.
The Neighborhood is, for all intents and purposes, a full time income menu system in which you along with other players (as your created MyCareer characters) can walk around, look for new duds, play pick-up games, exercise, or get a haircut. MyCourt remains, but now you can walk towards the courts from your apartment or your team's practice facility, because everybody loves walking, right?
It's a fascinating concept, however in actuality the area itself feels like a weird planned community that's completely without personality, just like a Westworld for basketball (minus the killer robots, of course). Imagine a place using the size and aesthetics of the outdoor “luxury” mall occur a dystopian future where everyone plays basketball, and you have a concept of what the Neighborhood seems like travelling inside it.
The thing about the Neighborhood is that, around every corner, there's some shop that's trying to get you to spend some money. This is most apparent whenever you consider the drab, almost prison-like uniform of the brown t-shirt and gray sweatpants that every player begins with at the beginning. Pretty soon, you see level 85 players (who had to have spent real-life money to obtain there already) travelling in flashy outfits, as well as your player seems like a loser in comparison. It is simply like high school once again, except rather than Tommy Hillfiger (or regardless of the kids are wearing nowadays), it's virtual Jordans and virtual Under Armour. If I hadn't been magically gifted 150,000 virtual credits since the copy of NBA 2K18 that the publisher sent me to review was the Legendary Edition, I would happen to be stuck with a general rating within the 60s (that is a long way on the “Road to 99”) for a while.
None of the would be a problem if NBA 2K18 compartmentalized its currency a little. Maybe after playing a game title, you can get some tokens to spend on upgrading your character's skills and some more about upgrading your character's wardrobe. There is however just one type of currency in NBA 2K18-gold coins cleverly named “Virtual Currency”-and you utilize it for literally everything, whether that's your MyCareer character's attributes, wardrobe, or haircut, or your MyTeam cards. Alternatively, that means that almost every mode you play will net you a handful of coins that you can then spend in any other mode, but you only make a little money at a time, a minimum of starting out, which lends itself to a feeling of running in position early on in your NBA 2K18experience. Deciding whether to spend your hard-earned coins on a single more attribute reason for your 3-point category or on the potentially wasteful MyTeam deck of cards is like Sophie's choice but, you know, a little less dramatic.
Of course, playing the game isn't the only way to earn virtual currency. You could spend real currency on virtual currency as well, and NBA 2K18 has lots of options for how much money the different options are on its gold coins. And if you're feeling lucky, you can always go to the Ante Up Courts locally, where you can put Virtual Currency at risk against other players. In other words, you are able to potentially gamble away real cash in NBA 2K18, inside a game that is somehow still rated E10+. However, at least you're gambling on yourself.
NBA 2K18's dependence on earning and spending Virtual Currency isn't only thing that can take time away from actually playing the game. Waiting is a big part of NBA 2K18. Before almost every MyCareer game is really a locker room cut-scene that you can't skip. To become fair, the cut-scenes are fairly well-written and -acted, but it is nothing like they develop your character or even the characters around you in any significant way, and only occasionally can they offer you dialogue choices that, as far as I could tell, have absolutely zero effect on your character's journey. Add to that all the holding out you'll do around the sidelines, in the gym, or even waiting for a wide open pass from player-controlled and AI teammates alike, and NBA 2K18 becomes an even more life-like simulacra but for all of the wrong reasons, namely that you will be waiting in line just as much in NBA 2K18 while you do in the real world.
Even the presentations in games still suffer from the same poor facial animations and dead eyes that plagued the last iteration. Shaq, Ernie, and Kenny sometimes look like they're asleep in the desk during pre-game shows, but at least their lip-syncing isn't as Mass Effect: Andromeda bad as the lip-syncing for that in-game interviews with the players. And sideline reporter David Aldridge still looks like a ventriloquist dummy come to life. As well as there's still a major disparity between the “stars” from the show-Shaq, Ernie, Kenny, and all-star players like Lebron James and Stephen Curry-and a few of the more supporting characters like cheerleaders or perhaps Rachel, the 2KTV reporter, who looks nothing beats her real-life counterpart. Fortunately, the play-by-play with Kevin Harlan and Greg Anthony is really as good as ever, and you do not have to look at anyone's face. However the on-court action that they're describing is equally as stuttered and blocky in no time as last year's game.
Fortunately, when NBA 2K18 concentrates on the foundation of sports games, which are the franchise modes, there's still a lot on offer. MyGM/MyLeague includes a plethora of options, such as the new MyGM: The following Chapter, which (somewhat oddly) follows your created character's first run like a GM a decade after having suffered a tragic career-ending injury. The only problem with this particular mode is the fact that all the poorly written dialogue is rendered a whole lot worse by the fact that it's delivered entirely in text, drawing even closer attention to how clunky and forced it is. Fortunately, there's always MyLeague, which still enables you to put together the NBA you've always dreamt of, plus season and playoffs modes, which are there for players like me who get the most enjoyment from sporting activities when I'm bringing my favorite team towards the championship. Even if you entirely skip the MyCareer and MyTeam servings of the sport and then leave the distractions of Virtual Currency behind, you will still have plenty to complete in NBA 2K18.
And should you simply ignore the ways in which MyTeam attempts to get you to spend some money, that can be fun too. Weekly Challenges promise to keep the single-player portions of the mode fresh, so if you feel feeling lucky, you could bring your team up against another player's who might have place a lot more money into their team than you're prepared to do.
Unfortunately, it seems that every year NBA 2K moves further and further away from developing the true meat-and-potatoes of sporting activities and are investing more in figuring out new ways to get players a larger investment on developing their avatars. Which after developing those avatars, if you don't possess a Pro-Am team, your own personal PvP efforts is going to be funneled into waiting in line to player matches of 3v3 with strangers. At the minimum, the internet server stability is stronger here at launch compared to years past, but now that NBA 2K18 has competition that allows you to simply queue for 5v5 matches the old-fashioned way, its propensity to help you wander around until you will find an almost full court after which wait for the current game to end before you can step onto the blacktop appears like a complete miscalculation. In a way, however, this experience is really a perfect metaphor for NBA 2K18 in a nutshell: it would rather make you walk-through hoops than you play its perennially solid the game of basketball.
