The season for sports games has arrived, as the many annual sports titles across the gaming world ready up for their newest release. With Madden NFL releasing its newest title and FIFA and NHL preparing for their launches in September and November, NBA 2K22 takes the spotlight as the next major title gearing up to hit the market on September 10. The upcoming basketball game has sprinkled new info throughout the summer, and recently released a gameplay trailer for the newest NBA 2K title.
NBA 2K22 has previously announced a number of significant details about the newest entry into the annual franchise. NBA 2K22 will be the first game in the NBA 2K series to feature a female athlete on one of its covers, starring six-time WNBA All-Star Candace Parker, and announced an overhauled quest system for the franchise's popular MyCareer mode as well as a number of other changes. The newest trailer highlights the most important part of any sports game: the gameplay.
The trailer highlighted the quickness of the game with fast-moving scenes accented by stylistic graphics. Many of the scenes showed off prominent NBA legends currently playing in the league, including Kevin Durant and LeBron James. The several gameplay highlights also showed off a significant number of unique player animations from some of the NBA's biggest stars, including Dallas's Luka Doncic and Golden State's Stephen Curry.
The second half of the trailer also showed off some of the WNBA's brightest stars in action in NBA 2K22, prominently featuring cover athlete Candace Parker. NBA 2K made waves a couple of years ago with the addition of the WNBA in NBA 2K20 as the first major sports title to feature a domestic women's league. 2K Sports is clearly committed to the inclusion of the women's league with NBA 2K22 featuring a host of updates to the WNBA's career mode as well.
NBA 2K22, like many other sports titles, has been the subject of harsh fan criticism in the past. Many fans criticize the yearly titles for looking and feeling the same with little discernible change in the gameplay from year to year. The newest entry in the NBA 2K franchise seems to be taking steps to remedy these complaints through updated single-player offerings and tweaks to many of the game's finer mechanics like dribbling and shooting.
Only time will tell if the newest entry in 2K Sports' premiere franchise will be the true upgrade fans have been waiting for.
NBA 2K22 will release on September 10 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.