Game Review: ‘NBA 2K24’

This is certainly an odd inclusion on our review slate this week. I get an email out of the blue offering us the chance to review the newest release in the NBA 2K series, part of a franchise that has been running for decades at this point. What makes this odd is that we don’t cover much in the way of NBA games, or sports games at all. In spite of have been a keen gamer for decades, sport simulators are a massive blind spot. The last genuine sports game we played, that being one without an extra gimmick, was Sensible Soccer. And not the version that was released in 2007…we mean the 1992 original on the Amiga. Yeah.

A complete lack of knowledge or experience isn’t going to deter us from giving this game a crack, however. From the outset it was clear that this was a game with an amazing amount of resources behind it, so we’re excited to navigate unknown waters.

We open with a number of game modes including a MyCareer role playing scenario, various online options and the ability to create unique characters and teams. We made a beeline for the quickplay options. We not sure if we got lost in the options somewhere, but we couldn’t find a simple opportunity to pick a team. Instead we could randomise it, and kept cycling it until we saw some familiar names (basically just Lebron James) and then went with that. Maybe I’m dense, but little of this feels accessible to newcomers. Either they don’t let us just pick a team, or the selection screens are inherently confusing. Whatever the case, we’re not clear on the decision making behind this.

Anyway, we managed to get a game going and started working through the pause menu to find the controller map and oooooooh boy. Keeping in mind that the last sports sim I played involved a joystick with one button I was not prepared for these characters to have more moves than a Tekken fighter. The controls were grouped into dribbling, shooting, passing, defence and more, with each having dozens of techniques listed. There’s alternate moves for some, involving buttons or analog sticks (we should point out this is for the PS4 version, so we won’t be commenting on the issues that have come up regarding the PC release) and they’re named things that just don’t mean anything to us. This was a major barrier for enjoyment, as there was no way we could wrap our heads around all this.

Having narrowed things down to movement, passing, shooting and changing characters we attempted a couple of rounds and managed the controls enough to improve each time. Our final effort involved us losing by less than 10 points, which we consider a reasonable achievement. We worked through the control mayhem enough to feel like we were steering events to some degree and worked out a few preferences regarding players stats. We never felt like we’d really mastered any aspect of the game, and at times it seemed like the plays were unfolding irregardless of what buttons we were pressing.

Now we only skimmed the surface of the experience, with any attempt to delve deeper leaving us confused and lost. Options to micro-manage the game with plays, picking characters to focus on specific opponents, and whatever else were completely beyond our understanding, so we stayed out of it. Looking into the MyCareer options and wider world of the game consistently felt like we were being funnelled into microtransactions, another aspect of the game we weren’t interested in exploring. For the target audience, the big basketball fans who want to indulge their hobby, these features will no doubt lengthen the experience until the next roster change is available.

As for us…we’ll play it a bit more and try and reach a point that it feels like we’re running the show rather than getting dragged along behind it. If there’s one thing we were really impressed by, it’s the incredible recreation of the televised sports experience. The character models are impressive in their realism, right down to recognising Jason Voorhees on a players arm tattoo, and there’s a huge amount of variation in movement, reactions and commentary allows you to pretend that it’s the real deal. The added flavour such as real advertising, sponsorships, reporters, camera positioning, replays and all that really add to a rich experience. The genre has come a long way from already ambitious roots in the short 30 years since we played sports game. It also really highlights how much advertising overshadows the whole industry.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the thoughts of a clueless berk with no clue reviewing a basketball game. I’m not sure we’ve provided any insight, but we had fun and will hopefully get some more milage out of it.