Yes, this is an NBA 2K24 review, but first I have a confession to make: I love the cheesy stories from the older NBA 2K games. Spike Lee would put 30 minute, over written cutscenes in a basketball video game and it was glorious. Remember when the arsehole friend died and the voiceover read the world’s most pathetic letter? I loved it. It brought campy, ridiculous drama to basketball in a way that made you connect. The career mode was all about falling more in love with the game and trying to live through the hopes and dreams of a character who can do something we can’t.
Sure, it wasn’t good on a technical or narrative level, but it gave us a reason to care. Back then it was a game that unashamedly said “we love basketball, with all our hearts, and part of the reason why is because of the hopes and dreams of these young men and how they play out.” The NBA 2K24 career mode is an even more naked money grab than usual, and while this year’s city is slightly less terrible than last year’s, it’s making me fall out of love with a series that I have been playing consistently since NBA 2K7. It’s straying further into the territory of saying “sure, basketball is nice, but bleeding suckers dry is better”.
What’s Wrong With The City in NBA 2K24?
The City is the worst idea 2K has had in a long time. The pitch is this: “What if instead of just playing basketball, you also had to waste a lot of time between games walking to different product placements in the game? What if this walking around was included only as a half-hearted attempt to lessen the impact of our aggressive monetisation? And what if our aggressive monetisation was so aggressive that renders your player no fun to play unless you’re willing to drop $100 on in-game currency? What if we caked all the in-game billboards in real advertising? And what if you can play online against people who spent a lot of money to upgrade their character because we’re pay-to-win now (even though it’s a full-priced console game with minimal differences from last year)?”
I will give 2K some credit, in that the street ball parks now look significantly cooler than they have in the past (I particularly like the giant octopus-themed one). But also, I don’t want to play multiplayer street ball, I want to play the NBA career mode, for which I came to the MyCareer mode section of the NBA game. Those should be different modes.
I can’t tell if the goal was to make players feel more immersed by slowly wandering around a needlessly large space populated by hundreds of almost identical people instead of just quickly navigating a menu. I do know that this seems to be so 2K can sell more cosmetics and in-game billboards. Everything is a branding opportunity, and there’s no such thing as a bad moment to try and bleed your fanbase dry, even if it does make the game less fun for people who can “only” afford the initial $100 outlay.
What I can tell is that The City does not respect my time. If I wanted to play an open-world RPG where I could wander around, I would go play one of a hundred good ones. I sincerely doubt NBA greats spend their time slowly walking from training to practice. The whole game is themed around Kobe Bryant, who famously used a helicopter to go everywhere (though that also explains why helicopters are not offered as a mode of transport).
You can fast-travel occasionally, but not everywhere, and not in a way that matters in the beginning.
In short, The City is designed to make you look at advertising longer, sell you digital clothes, and just waste your time. It is actively making the NBA 2K games worse.
Or, perhaps it’s an elaborate commentary on capitalism and greed, and how your soul can be slowly poisoned by things that at first seemed harmless in small doses, and then snowballed. But I don’t think it’s that deep.
NBA 2K24 Gameplay
When designing a game, it’s really important to listen to people who suck at playing it. Often we’re told about all the peripherals that are designed for pros, and how the developers have made lots of gameplay changes based on feedback from pro players. And that’s great! Esports athletes are incredible to watch, and they need equipment and gameplay modes that help them bring out their best.
But they also represent less than 1% of all players, and if developers spend too much time catering to them, it becomes easy to forget about people who will be new to the game, or aren’t that great at it. There needs to be modes and difficulty levels set for the majority of players, and I really think 2K has gotten the balance wrong here.
The tutorials are buried, require precise stick movement, and even when you follow the onscreen instructions perfectly, sometimes it just doesn’t work for some reason (could be a bug, could be that the instructions are off, sometimes it’s probably both). This puts off newer players, kids, and those with accessibility needs.
We know that the makers of this game know how to explain things clearly. Look at how easy it is to buy VC.
Perhaps there needs to be two options of controls, expert and regular? Surely we have the technology.
Complaints about ease of play aside, I’m also just really frustrated by how slow my MyPlayer is to react to running or moving for the ball. I often seem to experience a slight lag, or he just stumbles around, almost drunk. Now, if there was a detail in his backstory about a drinking problem, that would be fascinating. But instead, it’s either that 2K would like me to invest more than 100,000 VC into his stats, or there’s a bug that’s making the game less enjoyable/playable.
If I have to see “defensive breakdown” one more time, just because my player was randomly moving at half speed, or because I was suddenly assigned to guard a different player than the one I was told to guard a second ago, I will scream.
WNBA in NBA 2K24
Did you like the WNBA mode in NBA 2K23? Because it’s basically the same as that. It’s the pure basketball that I want the NBA MyCareer mode to be, but presented in a way that screams “this was an afterthought inclusion, we didn’t actually think you’d click on this part of the menu. Are you sure you want to play this?”
It’s got great bones, and it’s the mode I’ll probably keep playing for the rest of the year until NBA 2K25 comes out (turning off the commentary, because the mostly all-male commentary team includes a guy with one of the most annoying voices I’ve ever heard. It’s such a shame they couldn’t find even one woman to commentate). But it’s also clear that 2K doesn’t seem to value the WNBA mode. It was first introduced four years ago, but it’s seen basically no improvement since.
NBA 2K24 Verdict
Somewhere in this mess is a brilliant NBA game, struggling to get out from under the weight of product placements, monetisation, and the fact that the higher-ups at 2K seem to have forgotten that not everyone innately knows how to play their game.
NBA 2K24 is basically just 2K23 in a new hat, but with even more nonsense. 2K23 is still available on some subscription platforms, or in bargain bins, and if you’re craving some basketball action, then that’s probably what you should stick with until 2K24 comes down in price closer to what you’d be willing to pay for a game chock full of freemium garbage. Or, better yet, skip NBA 2K24 and wait until 2K releases a basketball game that doesn’t just treat players like fools who are easily parted with their money. Because they’re not going to stop making the game worse until they stop being rewarded for it.
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