If someone had asked me over the past few years which of the biggest sports games of the year usually offered the best deal each year, I would probably have said NBA 2K.
It’s not a ringing endorsement – unless you’re interested in any minor tweaks to the formula on offer, you can generally skip it or its competitors in the egg-handling or football business for at least a year or two, and actually Won’t miss much. But in a genre where packaging intensity and the sheer volume and depth of content are king, NBA 2K feels like LeBron. If he keeps trying to sell you fake money.
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NBA 2K25 is just as big as its infamous predecessor, running on my computer at around 133GB, which is about the same size as Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3, both games known for their sheer size. What you get by giving up all that hard drive space isn’t one sports game, but several smaller games combined into one giant mecha sports game. It’s like you tell Shaq, Kobe and Phil Jackson to stand on each other’s shoulders.
What does a real basketball game look like, you ask? OK, I answer. There are a bunch of new ProPLAY animations that let your movements mimic those of real players, making actions like shooting shots feel smoother and more realistic. There’s a new dribble engine that does more of the above and allows you to transition directly from the signature dribble to the pop-up shot as an animation.
When defending, just swinging the club at the right time can cut off the opponent’s attack. Each tweak does add something, but more to make an already very dynamic experience feel more polished and smooth, rather than something completely different. Learn 2K is a tutorial mode that walks you through everything from the basics to using these new features in your game, which is a smart move from an accessibility perspective, guiding people through the basics of MyTeam and The The same is true for similar functions of knowledge.
As far as modes go, I’ll start with the big one, which is actually a trench coat of three modes: My Player/My Career and City – an open world space that serves as the stage for your usual single player “build” .
This year’s city is a visually interesting place to play basketball, hang out, or fly around in a go-kart, bouncing on pedestrians you’re desperately trying to knock over. It’s also a fever dream that you’d be hard-pressed to describe to any non-2K player without sounding a little weird.
Take, for example, one of the test sites added this year. It’s basically a Roman Colosseum with Michael Jordan’s face on one side of it. Once you’re inside, you’ll jump into some multiplayer basketball games that are designed to be more competitive and ranked than what you’ll see in other buildings in the city. Because nothing says serious competition like a layup and a real Tiger watching from the sidelines, like if you lose, the Frotis guy is going to come out and dunk you.
There’s an endearing silliness to this, honestly, and the many other things you can do and places you can visit in Cities that I would all find endearing if it weren’t for the color present in the game. Flying so close to the sun, something like this feels a bit like the flashy facades you see on the Las Vegas Strip. The same goes for the new hangouts for the two online factions you can join – Elite and Rising – who call a bay with full-sized pirate ships home and a factory where mechs are being built, just for the cool factor.
The reintroduction of customizable pitches in your player apartments is a positive, but the new squad finder tool is a bit useless and the few times I tried to use it to find people to play with, especially if you’re always on the run Random people will usually do whatever the place you’re going to has to offer.
The MyCareer experience itself (you know, playing in the NBA through City Arena) was great. While there are cutscenes, keep things simple and get straight into the action, as Dynasty Hearts (the element that tells the backstory of how players get into the League) appears to be optional. It’s linear, but has some high school and international gameplay with nice bonuses for those who want an extra story.
Finally, 2K’s goal is to enhance the process of selecting an initial version of MyPlayer that you can use to handle all of this content. Admittedly, I’ve always been a bit basic in this regard – give me a 6’8″ small forward who can do something scoring-wise and I’m happy, but hopefully a professionally tuned build mechanic can help those who are looking Something different people. So far I haven’t had enough time to build my player to definitely judge whether I ended up with a better build than usual or unlocked a bunch of new takeovers and badges to play with, but I’ve had enough time Have fun in the games I master.
Now, all this is solved – MyTeam. I haven’t found the card collection modes I’ve played to be too bad, and things like the new Breakout and Triple Threat Park modes, which offer you short games and let you work through the players you’ve collected, are actually pretty good , and appealing despite the fact that the whole pattern isn’t usually one of my go-to patterns.
Showdown games are regular online showdown games, and it would be nice to get a better idea of how they fit into the new Lords of the Court weekend challenges, but unfortunately, not yet. , there have been no examples of the latter.
As for how the return of the auction house and the introduction of a rep system designed to last all year affects the economy and the long-term prospects of the model, we’ll have to wait and see, but I do seem to be touching on a bit of the latter once I get past the first three tiers. There will be obvious wall grinding.
Next, NBA 2K’s WNBA-focused element of the past few years, The W, continues to give me mixed feelings despite some substantial improvements. As always, I’m really glad it was included in 2K, but from an implementation standpoint it still feels like it’s been relegated to an underdeveloped corner compared to the rest of the game. It has its own “My Player” mode and its own online mode, but both are much smaller in scale and still don’t integrate with “Cities” or any of its accompanying elements.
I know there’s probably some corporate mumbo jumbo preventing it from happening, but it certainly wouldn’t be too much to let you run around the city as your WNBA player and let you utilize its arena to advance in your career. Difficult to achieve? Come on, there’s a building waiting to be built with Caitlin Clark’s face on it, especially with A’ja Wilson and Jayson Tatum on at least one game cover ) enjoy equal status and other measures are being taken.
I saved the part of NBA 2K that impressed me most recently for last. MyNBA Eras has been my main mode of playing 2K for the past few years. I haven’t seen another sports game quite like this except do one thing – let you play some thirty years of alternate league history in a franchise mode, ideal for those who like what-ifs Stylish – It offers pretty much any customization you could want.
But this year, it feels like I’ve lost more than I’ve gained. Running alongside the established thirty years and modern point is a new era, but it’s an odd choice. Beginning in 2016-17, the Stephen Curry era oddly bisects the 2010s (already catered to by the LeBron era starting around 2011) while pushing the modern era back to the present, rather than around 2020 start.
While I have a lot of respect for Curry’s Warriors, I don’t think the league has changed enough uniquely at this point in history that you can’t classify it as part of the modern era to warrant it’s own independence era. It doesn’t take anything away from the mode, but it does feel a bit unnecessary. The developers of NBA 2K may not be able to offer any help with the mode.
I believe that due to rights negotiations or rejections, several important players who were important to the league landscape during the Curry era are not in 2K25 now, despite starring in previous 2Ks. John Wall, Blake Griffin and Andre Iguodala are all big names, the latter of which is very important to the Warriors dynasty itself. Thankfully, they will inevitably be added via custom lists, but it’s still not ideal.
Our last stop was the relaunched MyGM, which was rather lackluster. We had tried making it a bit like an RPG, but it felt just as shallow as when we’d tried this kind of thing before. You can build a general manager with specific traits, which is cool, but going the charm route, I found myself able to work my way out of most goals the staff and players tried to set for me. These conversations are also a bit repetitive – at the start of two consecutive seasons, I had Cade Cunningham ask for a trade if I couldn’t guarantee him we were going to win.
I even came across a Jedi Mind Trick joke and a conversation about dreams that I’m pretty sure I remember from the previous GM mode in some form, though I haven’t double checked. It’s a mode that deserves to be around, but as time goes by, this revamp isn’t enough to stop it from feeling a bit like an afterthought.
Overall, NBA 2K25 is still a lot of fun to play, and I still think it’s good enough to maintain the series’ status as the market leader – especially now that PC finally has a next-gen version. However, there are enough issues that I don’t think this is a positive improvement, even if you definitely can’t label it as a carbon copy of last year’s game.
It’s a big enough game that you’ll have more than enough to do even if you just stick to one or two of your favorite modes, but if 2K’s strength lies in its entire massive package, then it’s setting itself up for something The goal is to become king in every game.
NBA 2k25 releases on September 6 for PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X/S/Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch. This review was conducted on a PC and the code was provided by the publisher.
