RandomReview: NBA 2K17: The Prelude [Rapid-Fire]

Rapid-Fire Review: NBA 2K17 The Prelude

This is a rapid-fire review, which is a shorter review than normal due to the game being small.

I’Il preface this by saying that I’ve never been a fan of MyCareer. So take my words with a grain of salt.

Me? Playing a sports game? Well yeah, I’m a big basketball fan, and I like the NBA 2K series because of it’s roster editor and franchise mode. As someone who likes being creative, I appreciate those features greatly, and I’m excited to see what MyLeague has to offer this year.

Then again, I think the series has a lot of faults. I think there’s improvements that need to be made in the other game modes for sure. MyLeague is perfect, it just needs to be given more features over time - which they are doing with 2K17.

So the prelude is a sort of free beta of 2K17’s MyCareer mode, where you create a player and follow a storyline through your player’s career. The storyline last year was curated by Spike Lee, but it just felt lackluster overall. It wasn’t really an intriguing story whatsoever. The story this year feels a tad more generic, but it feels superior to the storyline from last year. A lot less corny, for lack of a better term. Despite feeling generic, it’s still a sports game. It doesn’t have to be super complicated. Thus far, the college portion of the storyline that’s showcased seems fine.

Upon booting the game up, you’re presented with building a MyPlayer - whom you’ll assume control of in your career. Right away, I noticed that the UI for the menus was much slower than NBA 2K16, which surprised me. Was the game laggy? How could it regress from the past iteration? Although that bugged me a bit, I still went on to create a character. Now I didn’t scan my face, because I didn’t feel like it. If I can’t play as a female, what’s the point of putting my face on a masculine body? Sure, it’d be funny, but I want to take it seriously. So this guy who looks like a generic lawyer or something and played.

Besides, I noticed that the face scan feature was tied to the MyNBA2K17 app - but where is it? It’s not translated well. I’m sure if I looked it up I would find it, but you would think a big feature like that would be prevalent within the app. Instead it’s just a basketball Hearthstone game or whatever. (Which is fun, by the way.)

After creating my player, I noticed I got an achievement! Thank you, 2K, for adding simple achievements! Hey, if you need to rack up a few extra achievements or trophies, this little beta is worth it. The achievements aren’t tied to skill or performance, so even non-basketball fans could rack them up easily. My problem is that the last two achievements are tied to the 2K Store, which you must use in-game currency on. Which in itself is fine, I earned enough currency to do so… but the game fucking crashes everytime I select the store! I mean, I know it’s a beta, but it’s frustrating to see the game crash when I’m just trying to get those last few achievements! Come on, 2K.

One of the achievements was extremely frustrating. Not in difficulty, but the way it was presented. The game wants you to play a tutorial scrimmage match in order to get an achievement. You have to play the entire match of a 5v5, with a bunch of dudes that look like they’re from the YMCA. I wanted to use this mode simply to test the gameplay in a 5v5, since I’m not a big fan of MyCareer. It’s hard to do that when a little message pops up every few seconds telling you how to do something in the game, most of which are things I already knew how to do! You aren’t capable of turning these messages off, by the way. They freeze the game, and you’re forced to read it before the dismissal prompt appears a few prolonged seconds later. It was just something that made you roll your eyes every single instance it appeared.

That vexing experience aside, I can say with confidence that gameplay in NBA 2K17 is excellent. Graphics? Surely improved. They are top notch with graphical capability. The tutorial mode, besides the annoying pop-ups, was the most fun I’ve had in the entire length of The Prelude, along with the Olympic game in MyCareer.

MyCareer stretches through your player’s college days, where your performance will impact your draft stock in the upcoming NBA Draft. When creating your player, you’re given a variety of specializations for your player’s playstyle. You can customize their wingspan, height, and weight, as well - which impact the player’s capabilities when it comes to their attributes. After making the player, you’ll be given a brief cutscene with your high school coach before being given a selection of colleges.

I went with a Post-Scoring Center, with Illinois as my college of choice. Once in college, you’re given four scenario games with accompanying cutscenes. You’re accompanied by a senior player who is friends with your player through the college storyline. While he feels somewhat bland, he’s a likable character. One thing I noticed with the cutscenes - some of them don’t appear. Supposedly, your player gets a girlfriend through the college storyline, but I never saw that. Did I skip it by accident? I probably did, because I didn’t expect anything in this game to be actually skippable. The first college game has a grueling flashy sequence with 3D effects and whatnot on the court, but what’s the point? Just let me play! Nope, had to watch the whole thing along with the team addressing the crowd afterwards. At least the games afterwards had introductions that were skippable - after a short delay, of course.

I’m disappointed in the gameplay of MyCareer a little bit. I thought I did pretty well with my Center. I never got anything lower than a B teammate grade throughout, and in the end I won a title, with my draft stock shooting up to a lottery pick. On the court, though, your teammates seem a bit… braindead, for lack of a better word. They don’t play defense well, and they rarely shoot when you pass them the ball while they’re open. Since the game consistently critiques your performance after every match, I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough, so I had to call for the ball more often. I feel like it shouldn’t be necessary to spam the A button for the ball on every possession in order to improve my draft stock. I feel like the teammate grade should play a bit more into it.

Regardless, once you get through these four games, with an optional fifth depending on how well you do, you have a game where you get selected to compete with Team USA in the Olympics. This was really fun. It almost made me think that it must be the actual teammates that were faulty in the previous college games, and not just the A.I. in general. If you have competent teammates, they’ll play competently. In that sense, I applaud 2K for making the game the way it is then. It feels a bit more real that way, and it feels like you have to carry the load more as the star of the team.

Overall, though, this little beta wasn’t very impressive at all. It has a lot of flaws, and it just affirms my beliefs that yet again - MyCareer doesn’t perk my interest whatsoever, and MyLeague reigns supreme as NBA2K’s superior game mode. For those who do like MyCareer though, I think they’ll appreciate the way it is this year. It seems like they’re going for something that will really resonate with those players, and I think that’s the right move going forward.

So The Prelude gets a 4/10. That’s me being harsh. I don’t like it, but the glimpses I’ve seen of other aspects of NBA2K17 as a whole in this beta (graphics, gameplay, presentation, and etc) show a lot of promise, and I think 2K17 will be a very good game at launch, barring some kind of crazy meltdown release. You can never be sure these days.

4/10

Mediocre

My Fallout Amino Story

I used to be a moderator for Fallout Amino, but recently I've stepped down. Here's a bit of a retelling about what I've been through, and why I inevitably stepped down. 

I'm not giving any screenshots or specific usernames here, of course, because I don't want to start more drama, you know? I do mention Nicole by name here, but I'm not holding anything against her. I'm not painting her in a negative light, either. I love the job she's done.

For a long time, I've enjoyed the Amino apps. Pokemon Amino is where I got my start back in writing. For a while, I was discouraged. I didn't feel accepted. I had just left an institution, and I had just graduated high school, but what was next? I got rejected from three colleges in a row, so I just gave up and did what I did best. I started writing again. FanFiction, you know. By the way, FanFiction is not 100% smut-centric, I must say, before you curl your nose. Just a stereotype we get. FanFiction is simply using the characters in free stories that fall under the protection of Fair Use. There's plenty of smut ones, but there's plenty of good ones that are not. I like Horror and Action for the most part, but it's been a long time since I've written Action. For a while, I consisted on Horror. 

And during my time in Pokemon Amino, I got a reputation for writing Horror, and turning Pokemon into something darker - something that people are even afraid to think of in further thought. So the Amino apps always used to be standalone. "Pokemon Amino?" Find it in the app store. "Music Amino?" (Which I run, by the way.) Find it in the app store. The apps are basically places where people can get together to socialize about certain topics. So it's a social app, unique in it's own certain way. 

During the time I produced steady content for Pokemon Amino, I fell in love with Fallout 4 after it's release. So I wanted nothing more than a Fallout Amino. I've suggested the idea multiple times to the Amino team when possible, and inevitably, I found myself being selected to help moderate for the app on launch day. It was such a glorious time. It felt amazing to be blessed with the chance to lead a community for something I adored. I spent the entirety of the first day just refreshing the latest feed so I can welcome the newcomers. 

It was even more overwhelming to see how many people flocked to the app from the advertisements on YouTuber's channels. So I was happy to see everyone come in, and in turn, the arrival of new moderators on the team. Nicole, one of the members of the team wasn't on very good terms with me at first. I didn't the way she handled things, and I felt alienated from the group for a while, where everyone just sided with her. They even voted her captain of the team over me. As someone there from the beginning, it felt horrible. I didn't feel comfortable in my own role of taking care of the community I desired for so long. 

Over time, though, I started warming up to Nicole and appreciating her ways. I'm glad to call her a friend right now, but there's deep criticisms I can make with the way she runs things. 

One of the main things is personnel. She would always feel that the time is right to add new people into the group. She likes presenting things to people without asking, really. Without any input from the others first. Even though I did initially dislike the idea of adding three new people to the group upon getting a few months in, what was my say in it? I had no say in the matter, but I did like the people we brought in. I didn't have a problem with these people, but whatever.

Moving on to the next set of people was generally intriguing and interesting. We got some good members from the next five we brought in, even though I thought five would be too many at the time. Problems started to arrive after this group was slotted in. Some people were not performing as well as they should. Too many mistakes were made. Disabled posts that weren't against the rules and things of that nature. 

I didn't like the fact Nicole promoted one of the users from the group of three to Leader alongside her. It felt like she did it purely because they were friends. Although he's a nice guy, I feel like he's two-faced. He was always way too authoritative in the chat, but then outside of the chat he's just a chill guy that was nice to talk to. Other than that, I thought things were fine. I really liked the five we proceeded to bring in at that time period. One thing that bothered me was the amount of tension there was in the team. Over time, a lot of small spats came up that were bothersome, and I learned quickly through drama that Nicole didn't take criticism well. I can't fault her for that, of course, because I don't take it well, either - but it always felt like the drama we had always stemmed from her somehow, whether it was an idea she presented or mistrust over what she was doing... things of that sort. In that sense, I can show sympathy for both parties, believe it or not. I don't think Nicole deserves her hate. I even made a blog as a tribute to her, not long before I left. Then again, I don't think she was ever straight with a lot of issues. She tried things that came too sudden a lot of the time and made me uncomfortable. 

Then she crossed a line.

I really disliked the fact that we brought in three new curators - two of which were from another Amino she ran. I would prefer to bring in homegrown talent to avoid polluting the team with conflicting thoughts and mindsets. This time, however, I was right. It was an awful idea. 

The one curator that originated from Fallout Amino was fine. His arrival didn't bother me, and I would gladly dub him as a friend of mine. 

The other two are the most horrendous individuals I've ever had the unfortunate pleasure of working with. 

The first big instance was when Nicole presented the idea of curator reports because there was suspicion of inactivity. The idea made several members of the group uncomfortable, of course. The best comparison, although cheesy, would be the Hero Registration Act from the Marvel universe. It feels like I was being regulated to do my daily job of moderating the community. Like I wasn't trusted enough to do the job. The job I wanted to do since Day 1. I'm a human, not a robot. I don't need to log my every action. So I voiced how I felt about it, and being a Leader at the time, I felt I had to have a say in it. Yet it started this big argument with the two new curators, who thought they had a bigger voice than they really had. They weren't even past their trial at the time. They proceeded to claim that we were being insulting for speaking our opinions, because they seem to be the biggest white knights I've ever seen. Nicole cannot take the slightest bit of criticism in their eyes. Just because someone on the team dislikes an idea she presented is not a green light for you to go about ranting at the people who critiqued the idea. These infidels did not see that, however, and instead believed that they should mock our team, insulting their intellect and moral compass. 

The straw that broke the camel's back was the second instance of this occasion, when Nicole decided to log off for the evening because of an incident that happened earlier in the day that made her cry. One of our younger curators thought it'd be nice to post a meme in the chat in an attempt to lighten the mood. This didn't go over well with one of the white knights. They berated the young curator, and then proceeded to insult the entire team, inevitably calling us "the most disorderly" group of curators, which I took personally. You're insulting the team, every single person on it and what they do to help the app. 

So I called him out for his condescending ways then and there.

What happened afterwards was the most fantastic meltdown I've ever seen. 

I was insulted. Berated. Vexed. Flat out disrespected in front of my fellow moderators for trying to defend their honor. 

I've had perfectly wonderful evenings. This wasn't it. 

So, finally, I stayed away from the chat after the slur of insults. It hit me hard. It insulted my leadership, since I was there from day one. I wanted Fallout Amino to exist. I was there to see the growth. I was there when we got a flood of users. I was there when we were struggling to put a team together. 

He was not. And he never will know that experience. He won't know what being a real moderator is like. 

The final incident was later in the day, when the younger curator came to vouch for my honor, protesting to the white knight that what he said was too far. I have feelings too, you know. I might be a somewhat sociopathic crazy chick, but fucking hell! That was horrible. I thought I was going to be put into an institution again, because I was on the verge of ending it all right then and there. This was all I had going for me at the time. I have barely anything to my name besides this app. I accomplished something here. I helped build this community, and one of the people below me just throws insults and disrespect my way, so what's the point anymore? 

Then I saw him do the same thing to my younger friend. In the end, I just left the chat. I couldn't bear to see it anymore. After discussing things with a member from Team Amino, I talked to Nicole about stepping down from my position. It was rough, to say the least, since the guy I spoke to about stepping down was the same guy who gave me the position on launch day. 

Look, I have no ill-will towards Nicole. No ill-will towards Team Amino. I appreciate them both and thank them for all the opportunities they gave me. 

If Nicole wants to keep people like that in her team, so be it. Not my problem. She can lead the app the way she wants, and although I disagree with some of her choices post-incident, it doesn't bother me. 

However - I REFUSE to work in an environment where people are allowed to blatantly disrespect and insult my leadership and abilities just because they refuse to see the error in what they say. 

Now, I'm putting this out here for people to know. I want people to know what happened to me on Fallout Amino. I want people to know why I love the app so much, and why I've put it off for now. I also want people to know what they're getting into when they join the team. 

Four people left the team in a short timespan for a reason, that's what I'm getting at. That's all for now. 

Thanks for hearing me out.