Last year’s NBA offering was a great game, perhaps one of the best sports game out there, and now 2K16 has simply blown it straight out of the water. Thinking of new ways to improve the NBA series must have been more difficult than shooting a 3 pointer with 1 second of the game left, but 2K has managed to do just that with the new and improved career mode. Swiftly after moulding your masterpiece via an extensive character creator, you’re entered into an emotionally charged storyline with well-acted cutscenes and entertaining scripts, which chronicles the first year of your player’s career (Named Frequency Vibrations or Freq). One of the biggest criticisms levelled against annual sports games is that they’re nothing more than a roster update with a slight increase in graphics and one or two token features that are touted as major changes.

 

So when NBA 2K16 makes the effort to include something truly different, it’s sure to be applauded, no? 2K Sports didn’t make a basketball video game this year, they have finally made a basketball simulation. My go-to move has always been the pick-and-roll, where a teammate sets a screen on my defender, allowing me to dribble pass and draw both defenders to me before I dumped the ball off to someone else for an easy lay-up. It worked 98% of the time (the other 2% accounts for my brain-farts), but this year the success rate has dropped way down. After running the same play twice, my defender knows the screen is coming and fights it off earlier, not allowing a gap to open up and forcing me to create with the ball more frequently and use my basketball knowledge to best the defence.

 

At first, you won’t feel a great lot of change in the franchise when you get your hands on the all-new NBA 2K16. The creators wanted you to feel at home, pushing gameplay and presentation changes as smoothly for your smooth consumption. Once you’re 2-3 games in, you will feel the change getting more evident, apart from some major changes that show up right away. NBA 2K16 has tuned up AI performance basis on the various player difficulty grids, you will feel that you’ll need to perform way better than what you used to do, in order to stay in the game. That comes along with the button mapping changes, now you can bounce pass the ball whenever you find a free teammate running towards the net, escaping the high guard of a blocker near you.

 

The Alley-Oops have changed, making it slightly complex because currently you will have to double tap the overhead pass button, and perfect timing determining whether the team-mate hits it home or falls prey to a blocker in the air. There is some slight alteration made to the jump shots, as they are nowhere godlike, like they used to be in 2K15, making you play for dunks more often. Featuring a movie directed by Spike Lee entitled Livin’ Da’ Dream, players have the chance to be the star in a full film in the MyCareer mode about their player’s basketball life. Expanding on the usual story that focused solely on the court and endorsements, the 2K team has now added in the family, friends, and love aspects for a more well-rounded experience of what a real star goes through.

 

For those looking for the perfect basketball experience that will give them endless playing time, NBA 2K16 is just that. While there isn’t much competition for the 2K team as far as basketball games, the game keeps improving and is slowly becoming one of the best sports franchises in the gaming community today. All in all, it looks to be a fantastic addition to the game, one which was initially suspected to be too heavily focused upon MyCareer mode. Instead, 2K have brought back online leagues with a vengeance, a move which could potentially even overshadow Spike Lee’s involvement. Either way, this news is sure to spark even further excitement among NBA 2K’s fanbase - and could well attract a sizeable new audience too, such is the impressive, accessible nature of these features.