Early 2K Impressions & Suggestions

How do you top the greatest sports game ever? If you're the developers over at 2K, you add NBA Legends and you refine your gameplay significantly--that's how. NBA2K12 is NOW the best sports game ever made, but that's less impressive than it sounds. You see, we kind of expect this kind of improvement from NBA 2K. Now please don't think we're spoiled or taking for granted the attention to detail that the developers have. NO WAY. They are far and away some of the best (if not the best) developer in gaming today. Here are a few of the things we've noticed in our short time with NBA 2K12.



 0. Branching Plays - This alone makes the game worth the price of admission. We'll say it again, this improvement by itself makes 2K11 obsolete. Quite possibly tied for the best innovation this year with Online Communities. And while OC probably gets the edge based on its sheer size, this is another feature we'll wonder how we ever did without.

1. Abusing The Paint  - It's early but spam the paint at your own risk, the days of turboing into the paint for dunks and spamming jump-hook after jump-hook, lead-pass and spin dunk appear to be over. A mixture of competent help defense, real shooting percentages and contact animations finally have the paint displayed well. Our one complaint is that users still seem able to button mash blocks in the paint. We'd like to see more shooting fouls if the timing or is off or the non-shot blockers are used. Your FG% will finally prefer the open 15-footer to the contested layup. TRUST US.

2. Online Play - It's working after a rough first day but I was impressed after I was finally able to connect (which took a long time) My first experience was a Knick fan who tried to pump-fake all day, throw long passes, SPAM Amare and Melo, block everything, not to mention SPAM the steal button. He was riddled with fouls (Billups fouled out) has 13 turnovers (I had 4) and although I thought there could have been more fouls called in the paint, it was pretty solid. Shooting percentages looked good as well, street-ball it up all you like, just be prepared for a sub 40% shooting percentage. Not bad 2K...not bad.

3. Pass Sensitivity - Ugh. One of 2K's lowlights here, sadly we can still break down the defense, spot a cutter going to the hoop, draw his man and..................throw the ball to a covered player in the far corner. Talk about frustrating. Turnovers like these result in way too many easy baskets for the other team. Hopefully this gets addressed soon. We want the ball to go where WE WANT IT TO GO. This is made even more effective by defenses like the half-court trap (which works) where you have to get the ball out your hands quickly. Bad passes in situations like these will result in a turnover nightmare.

4. Cropped Replays - We're glad someone thought of this. The best feature we never knew we needed. Now we can save only the relevant parts of our highlights and ignore the part with the guy picking his nose at the beginning. SWEET.

5. Foul Trouble - When's the last time you saw THIS in a NBA 2K game? How about never? Defenders aggressively defend the paint and mismatches are illustrated quite well. Yes, you'll see blocking and loose ball fouls as well.

6. Defender Movement - Much better, the days of chasing offensive players off screens while running half-speed or out-of-control with turbo are gone. L1 is now the "median" speed we always knew we needed. Magnifique!

7. Less Dunks - We spoke the Czar about this pre-release. The conversation went something like this: "it'd be nice if the aggressive modifier meant aggressive move to the basket and NOT just dunk." He agreed. ITS IN THERE. Dunks are made even sweeter by the fact that they don't happen every other possession.

8. More Intuitive Shot-Stick - This Shot-Stick is much more intuitive, but it still has a ways to go. We're still getting situations where we want to continue to the basket and we pull-up or when there's no defender between us and the basket and we get a jump-shot. One was on a fastbreak. UGH.

9. Ball Denial -Another low-light here. Ball Denial has essentially been removed. The great animation we had for 2 years has been replaced with one that doesn't seem to work. And while we've gone on record with saying that the system that prevented us from passing to players in Ball Denial animations was bad, ball denial certainly shouldn't have been taken out. If anything it should have been expanded upon and limited realistically with users still being able to pass to "denied" players, and having us see a mixture of under-duress catches, holding fouls, increased fatigue, occasional steals and deflections and even instances where the players passed to have a longer "gather" when they secure the ball because they're fighting hard to secure it. Ball Denial has basically been neutered, and its puzzling because it was one of the features that set NBA 2K apart and that we had high hopes for.

11. Bumping Animations -These have returned and while we like them, we DO NOT LIKE the fact that the system still makes players in bumping animations unavailable and randomly chooses another person to pass the ball to, usually resulting in turnovers. What happened to User Control? We'd like the ball to go WHERE WE WANT IT TO GO, Please and Thank You. If our player bobbles the ball way, takes longer to gather, has the defender steal it or deflect it away we're fine with it.

12. Loose Balls - These are done really well. Over-dribblers beware, indiscriminately bumping into friend and foe alike will result in turnovers. Hallelujah!

13. Out of Position Defense - Still a bit too many blocks and steals from bad defensive position. Especially in open court situations. While we understand these plays happen from time to time it needs to be lessened a bit. More of these plays should be whistled fouls so that people aren't expecting great plays when its not the norm.

14. Out-of-Bounds Plays -  These often go overlooked, but not here. The ability to choose Inbounders and Shooters is greatly appreciated, and the fact that are ball-handlers no longer make themselves static targets on inbounds plays when the opponent is pressing is long overdue.

Those are our early impressions, its certainly a great day for NBA fans. While there are a few hiccups, early impressions are that this is a game you'll play until next year's release. Now if the Owners, Lawyers and Players will get out of each others' way we might be able to actually enjoy our rookies and the great real-time updates that 2K is trying to implement with player likenesses and equipment. Don't forget to HAVE FUN guys.