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
No comments:
Post a Comment