With NBA 2K21 being one of the most anticipated games of September, the annual sports game should, in theory, only improve year after year as the developer can refine and tweak the criticisms of its predecessor while keeping what fans liked about the game unchanged.
While that is true in many parts of the popular basketball game, NBA 2K21 falls victim to many EA development tropes; the bugs when playing online and the incessant micro-transactions to name a few. The game does have its failures, and it won’t be making the best EA Sports games list anytime soon, but there are some terrific and unexpected developments too.
10 Got Right: Shot Stick Aiming
Shot Stick Aiming isn’t just a tweak on the gameplay, but it is a completely new addition to the game and revolutionizes the way players shoot baskets in the series. It even puts newbies and seasoned experts at an even keel, as the technique is difficult to master and resets the learning curve of NBA. It is the best addition to the latest entry and the new technique might even be enough for 2K21 to be considered as one of the best NBA games.
9 Failed: Story Mode Campaign
The new career campaign, which is named The Long Shadow, follows Junior who is playing basketball in the shadow of his father who passed away. The career sees Junior go from playing in high school to making the NBA draft. Strangely, much of the story focuses all too much on Junior’s girlfriend and it negatively distracts from the gameplay of the campaign all too much. However, there is an upside in which the mode it skippable and that it brings back high school courts in to the game.
8 Got Right: Online AI For Teammates
Though a lot of NBA 2K21 unsurprisingly repeats many of the same sins its predecessor had, it has improved in some surprising ways. Non controlled players in online-play act much more realistically than they ever have, and they even make more space for themselves instead of annoyingly crowding around each other like they so often used to do. This improvement makes online play actually fun and it helps the game feel more like basketball.
7 Failed: NPC Issues
Though it doesn’t make the game unplayable, fans of the series will constantly be losing games and missing shots due to something that most likely wasn’t their fault, as there are constantly examples of bad team chemistry.
On the flip side, NPC issues can make the game too easy as well, as the CPU often acts way too aggressive on double teams. This makes it way too easy to find open teammates because the opposing team members are all over the character’s back. And this has been an ongoing issue for years now.
6 Got Right: WNBA Teams
There are tons of classic teams that players can play as in 2K21, but this time around there is the involvement of the WNBA, where the top female teams are now playable for the first time. It took EA long enough as it has been long disputed and a hot topic of discussion, but it’s better late than never, and women will even be available in the create a player mode (but not until the release of the next generation version.)
5 Failed: Lack Of Upgrades To Game Modes
In what seems like an entirely evil plan, the game modes that don’t have micro transactions haven’t been upgraded whatsoever, meaning that players who want to play a new and upgraded version of My League may as well stick with their copy of NBA 2K20. And even though it could have been an easy process, the WNBA have not even been added to My League, despite them being in other game modes.
4 Got Right: Venice Beach
In what is a weird coincidence, there are two high profile September release games based in Venice Beach. Along with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, 2K21 also takes place in the glorious sun trap with an array of courts for the player to play in and little areas to explore. There have always been neat and interesting things people could do in NBA 2K20, but its successor steps it up a notch with the ability to wander around even more.
3 Failed: Online Crashes And Latency Issues
A popular thing that pops up in EA sports games are the crashes that happen online way too often. It’s almost as if EA believes players think it’s fun and so they include it as a feature of the game. Just like NBA 2K20, the one before that, and so on, NBA 2K21 is full of these crashes.
And to add insult to injury, when players finally manage to get into an online game, they are plagued with latency and delay issues, and the reaction time can sometimes take up to a second long!
2 Got Right: Player Ratings
Though there were some player ratings that made no sense in 2K20, and that remains the same to some extent in 2K21, there have been some vast improvements. The best part being that, in a league where most of the players can easily hit three pointers, the game hasn’t just gi energy every player a high rating for three-point shots, as they’ve only given four players a 90 or above. This new point system for players has added variety and help players use strategy to win games.
1 Failed: Pay To Win Micro-Transactions
It wouldn’t be an EA game without in your face micro transaction options, but with each year it gets worse and worse. With the pay-to-win options, it takes a lot of grinding to earn the same rewards naturally. Yes, gamers should want to play the game, but the amount of games necessary to win in order to gain the reward is unnecessary and not equal to how many hours players put in. It’s almost impossible to win games if players don’t pay EA more money after forking over $60 for the game itself.