NBA 2K15 was one of the best sport simulations that has been released in 2015. Unfortunately, the game had some Bugs in the PC version but 2K set the goal for them self to not repeat is for this one. We want to find out if they made it. But there is a lot of more we want to talk about in this review. In addition, we want to focus on the new story-mode which seems to be a new scale for stories in NBA 2K16. Let’s find it out.
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First we want to give you an overview on the new features of NBA 2K16:
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- Career mode with story by director Spike Lee
- New physics engine
- Online mode with ten leagues
- All teams are up to date
- New 2K Pro-Am-Mode for 5-on-5 tournaments
- Twelve new Legend Teams
- Eight new European-Teams
- Three new parks in MyPark-Mode
- Off-Season now with Draft Lottery
- 3-on-3 Streetball online mode in MyLeague
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The typical upcoming NBA-Star is clearly defined, he comes from a poor family, loves Mom’s burger and also would do anything for a successful basketball career. His name is Frequency Vibrations, and he has a nice twin sister who has teached him the basics of basketball. That is how the well known Oscar-Winner Spike Lee imagine an aspiring basketball rookie.
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The US-Director has created NBA 2K16’s career Mode, his Story-Movie is called »Livin’ Da Dream«. Spike Lee let us enjoy the character’s career, which starts on the High School in Harlem and ends as a full NBA-Pro-Gamer. NBA 2K16 includes more than 100 minutes of cutscenes. Before we start this career we have to create our own character in the game’s Editor. In addition to the look we also can give him a name, but he get always called ‘Freq’ in the cutscenes.
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What we like is that the career-mode is build up like a kind of documentary in which Spike Lee interviews the characters. We like the high quality and how good all the cutscenes are made. Some of them are 15 minutes long or even longer. Unfortunately, we do not like that the story plays with typical clichés and stereotypes characters. What we like is that Spike Lee will confront racist resentment. Even if you create an european character type, your family is still afro american. Unfortunately, you only can choose the College-Steam you want to start in. After that you do not have any freedom of choice about how your career is going on. We think that they give away some great potential at this point. It is also not possible to influence on the relationships that we have with the other characters. We think that this things are very important for a game that is so strongly build up on the story.
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If we take a closer look on the career-mode we see that between all this cutscenes or the training in our private hall, we have to prove ourselves on the court. In the first year of the MyCareer-years you have to play 15 matches, three on the High School, four on the college and eight in the Rookie-Season. It is not important how good you play in this matches, you definitely get a foot into a NBA-Pro-Club.
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After you finished the story, the career-mode works like the one in the game before, and this is great. You have to go through ups and downs in your NBA-Career, you’re able to play all 82 matches of a complete season, search for Sponsors, connect important contacts and use social media to gain popularity with the fans.
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In addition to the MyCareer-Mode, NBA 2K16 includes a lot of more game-modes:
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- MyPark – Here you play with your character on Streetball-Parks online against other squads
- MyGM – In this mode you can manage a NBA-Team
- MyLeague – This is a card trading game
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New is the 2K Pro-Am. You can only play this mode online. This mode allows 5 vs. 5 Tournaments that gonna be streamed on 2KTV. Unfortunately, it was not possible to start a Pro-Am match on the console until now. We hope that 2K will fix it as fast as they can.
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What we like is that the NBA 2K16’s Online-Ligues, which are back in this game, worked without any problems. We had the opportunity to play in ten different classes against other player online. We think that this mode is very motivating, because every game you win and every game you lose changes your ratings. What we love is that the enemy’s strengths is automatically adapt to our current balance. That means that fair matches are guaranteed.
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We noticed that the gameplay is unbelievable good. The developer Visual Concepts did an incredible job once again. They took the gameplay of the last game as a backbone and added a lot of subtleties, improved player movements and added also more signature moves. Thanks to the new physics engine the game feels more believable or, you can call it, realistic. What we like is that even the player’s footwork and weight has effects on the gameplay. We noticed also that the improved the defense. What we like is that they did not allow to score points again and again in the same way. It seems that the team-coaches guess attack patterns and respond with tactical modifications, if we use the same offensive attacks too often.
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Let’s talk short about NBA 2K16’s Soundtrack. This was put together by the well known three producers, DJ Mustard, DJ Khaled and DJ Premier. This soundtrack includes more than 50 Songs in different playlists. You can listen to them on Spotify for free.
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Unfortunately, the controls are a little bit complicated. That’s why we recommend to play some training-games as a tutorial before you start to play match after match. Bow passes and floor passes got their own keys now. We noticed that NBA 2K16 is too complex to play it with your mouse and keyboard. We recommend to play this game only with a gamepad.
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Like we said above, unfortunately the last NBA 2K game did not run very well on the PC. What we can say now is that 2K reached their goal to improve the game for the PC.
What we like is the great graphical details of this game. The arenas und viewers, the improved face and character animations which even looked very good in the last game and the whole atmosphere is fantastic. What we also like is that they still included the format which is inspired by the TV broadcast which includes how the players enter the stadiums, cheerleaders, organ-music and even the slow motion reps; just terrific how this game looks like. We love the show before, between and after the game. This great atmosphere Put us in an instant good mood to play more and more.
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Unfortunately, Spike Lee and the story he created for this game is not the reason to play the game in the near feature again. We think that the story plays with known clichés too much and includes too many stereotype characters. To include the known story of the ‘Underdog’ from the Hood that becomes the great NBA star isn’t a bad idea, but we wished we had more freedom of choice. Yes, we could add that it isn’t good that you should definitely play this game with a gamepad, but we think that people playing basketball-simulations have a gamepad in their drawer.
On the other hand, the rest of the game keep us entertained for a long time. The reasons: The great gameplay, the awesome and noticeable atmosphere, the unbelievable good graphics and how realistic the game is, the great online gameplay and the beautifully converted animations. This all impressed us much. We can feel that the developers loves basketball in every second of playing NBA 2K16. We also love and noticed quickly that the developers want to improve the game series each time they release a new part of it. We think that this game is one of the best sport simulations of the year. And this is the reason why we want to give the jadoRendr award for ’Best Sports Simulation’ to 2K for NBA 2K16. We think that every sport fan, even if he isn’t so much interested in basketball, should have this game in his shelf.
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