NBA 2k15 Review: Initial Thoughts And Reactions

It’s that magical time of the year in which NBA basketball and video games become one entity.

For many NBA fans, Lance Stephenson‘s Instagram post is a pretty accurate projection.

NBA 2K15 was released Tuesday, and after many months of hype–probably the most any 2K game has ever received–millions of gamers, including myself, were able to take the new title for a spin. It’s got its strengths and weaknesses, as expected with any new release, but overall, 2K’s developers did a great job. I played for a couple of hours, and gathered what I believe to be a pretty decent analysis of NBA 2K15.

First and foremost, we’ve got to address the graphics. We didn’t see a huge visual jump from NBA 2K13 to NBA 2K14, but that was far from the case with 2K15. Even on Xbox 360, the game just looks gorgeous. The player skins are spot on, the jumpers are smooth, and the new aesthetics, like the redesigned scoreboard and court designs, give the game a more modern feel.

Of course, one of the most realistic features of NBA 2K15 is the new player animations. In years past, the players had been somewhat rigid with their mannerisms. All big men behaved a certain way, and all guards did another. With the use of much more personalized animations for each player (especially superstars), 2K15 does a great job of making the players feel like their real-life counterpart.

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The 2K team also added new dribble and dunk packages (which weirdly include an absurd number of left-handed jams), further decreasing the repetition of animation seen in 2K14.

Improving the realism of defense was one of the biggest strides made with NBA 2K14, and that trend continued into this year. Now, there is increased friction between an offensive player and his defender, making it much more difficult to simply blow past the D.

With that said, one-on-one defense in 2K15 is significantly harder than it was in last year’s title, largely thanks to the implementation of improved ball-handling abilities for guards, notably things like “double moves” (a combination of two dribble moves). Man-to-man sets seem to be the way to go, especially considering the infamous 1-3-1 trap defense has been removed from the game.

Turnovers aren’t as frequent, and it appears as though the game designers have partially corrected the issue of missing easy layups. Overall, the game just seems balanced, and plays more like a real NBA game would. Scoring in isolation is much more difficult than in years past, and in order to win games, ball movement is essential.

Besides general gameplay improvements, NBA 2K15 has added a few new defining features, the most prominent being the new shot-release system and the face scan. The former appears on all four major consoles, and has generally gotten positive feedback.

Personally, I don’t love the new system. While the meter removes the necessity of learning each player’s individual release, like it had been in the prior games, looking at the meter distracts the gamer from the artistic beauty of the new shooting strokes. Additionally, without having to understand how to read and time a player’s release, less skilled gamers have it significantly easier this time around.

The other ground-breaking feature in 2K15 is the new “face scan” capabilities on the next-gen consoles. The idea is to use the camera on the PS4 and Xbox One to, well, scan your face into the game. When done correctly, it actually works very well.

Unfortunately, according to Twitter, for all the scans that worked correctly, there have been twice as many that have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The one on the top left is especially horrifying.

But as nightmarish as some of these deformed “face scans gone wrong” are, Pierre the Pelican still gets the nod for scariest NBA-related figure.

In sum, NBA 2K15 really is a heck of a game; the designers got so much right. If you have some extra money, some time to kill, and aren’t afraid of mutant horrors (as CNN put it), I would definitely recommend you head out to your local Gamestop to pick up your copy of the newest addition to the 2K franchise.