Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K Games, 2K Sports
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch
Tested on: PS5
NBA 2K22 – Review
Each year around this time, most sports games are getting their new installments with new features and team rosters. The NBA games published by 2K are no exception to this. 2K has now released NBA 2K22, the newest basketball sim, which offers a great experience for those who’d prefer playing basketball over football FIFA, or Hockey in NHL. NBA 2K22 doesn’t really bring a lot of new features to the table, but it has improved some things.
Story
For story content, NBA 2K22 provides you with the MyCAREER mode. In this mode, you create your own player, define his stats, and start with the story of a young player who wants to make his way up to become a big shot in the NBA. You’ve got the choice to start in college, G League or declare for the draft and head for the NBA straight away. Each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages and the choice is up to you. The story progresses according to the choices you’ve made and story content will constantly pop up after games or events.
Graphics
NBA 2K22 definitely looks gorgeous on the PlayStation 5, with a lot of details found in character design and the small details like sweat dripping off the players’ faces during a heated match, the cheerleaders in between quarters, and more. When looking at the game in the standard broadcast camera mode, it looks just like the real thing. Surely, you can still identify that it’s a videogame, but still, it looks really lifelike. All the menus and interfaces look very streamlined and also very inviting. In the main menu, one of the tiles is used as a broadcast screen that’s called 2KTV, which constantly shows videos of interviews, current events, tips & tricks, and more.
Sound
Like in many sports games, there’s a big list of songs from different kinds of genres that you can listen to while navigating the menus of the game. When one of these songs doesn’t fit your style, you can skip it with the press of a button to listen to the next one. The interaction in the MyCAREER mode is performed very well with good voice acting. When on the playing field, you’ll hear a lot of different announcers as the game has a whopping thirty different announcers. All these announcers have their own home team, so in each game, you’ll hear a different announcer.
Gameplay
NBA 2K22 is, as the name implies, a game that revolves solely around basketball. In this game, there are quite a few game modes to play, be it online or offline. There’s always a game mode that suits your interests. Just like other sports games, this new installment provides you with the newest team rosters and some new features as well.
In our opinion, NBA 2K22 is in a whole other league comparing it to other sports games like FIFA because of its ridiculously fast pace. Of course, in real life, the pace of a match of basketball is very fast as well, but this doesn’t make it any easier for new players to try and win a match. Luckily, the game provides you with the 2KU, the perfect place to learn the basic controls, hone your skills, and more. As a new player, you’ll be spending quite some time at the 2KU before you are ready to take on other players or even the CPU. The CPU is ridiculously good, even on low levels, as their shot accuracy is almost 100% and they know all the tricks, so they will easily walk past all your defenses. Defending in this game is quite complicated, as it’s much easier to make a foul instead of successfully intercepting a ball. All the more reason to spend a lot of time at the 2KU to practice your skills before moving on.
There are a lot of actions you can perform while in possession of the ball, and they’re all explained in the 2KU, but knowing how to perform them isn’t everything. Each of these actions requires perfect timing, or your player will do something completely different than you wanted him to do. For example, when dunking a ball, even when pressing the right commands, our player rarely did dunk the ball into the net, because, most of the time, he’d just throw it in a very weird angle. We’re sure this is all due to our inexperience with the game and its mechanics, but it felt quite difficult to get even a little bit better at this game.
Since the previous installment, you can choose to start a career for both the NBA and the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association). After creating a player, you’ll progress through the game in a fairly natural way. While not in matches, you can roam around the city, talk to NPCs, and take on quests found all over the city. These quests can be story-related but can also be part of time-limited events. By completing these, you’ll earn more money, experience, and items to customize your own player. This mode is sure to offer you a fun experience that mixes gameplay with an interesting story and a lot of side quests to mix it up even more. Compared to the last installment, the city in the MyCAREER mode has been upgraded, as it was rather empty with only player-controlled people roaming the city. Now, it is also filled with non-playable characters, which is a vast improvement.
In the MyTEAM game mode, you get to create your own team with the players you collect by opening card packs. When you first start the mode, you get quite a few packs that provide you with enough players to create your own team. Aside from players, you can also get items like contract cards, jerseys, power-ups, and a lot more. You can buy new packs with the money you obtain by winning matches with your team in the various game modes. There are a lot of different game modes you can compete in, where one offers a lot of different mini-games you can play against the CPU or against other players. The more you play and win, the more currency you get to buy more card packs. Of course, just like with FIFA Ultimate Team, you can buy in-game currency with microtransactions, which allows you to buy packs faster, but this can easily cost you a lot of money as the prices are rather high.
Conclusion
NBA 2K22 is once again a crowdpleaser and fans of the series will find a lot of content at their disposal. Even though in many countries in Europa basketball is not getting the same attention as football, we very much enjoyed the experience and love that this game is so polished. Each match looks very lifelike and the game offers a good story mode and a lot of things to do in the various game modes. The strong CPU, even at lower difficulties, made it quite difficult for us to truly make progress, but when we did, it was a proper feeling of achievement. Aside from the improvements to the MyCAREER mode, there aren’t really a lot of noticeable things that got improved, but if it’s not broken don’t fix it. If you’re a fan of the franchise, then this game surely is a must-buy, but if you’re completely new to the sports and the game, be warned that that this game is not that easy.
NBA 2K22 - Review,
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