Cursory NBA 2K15 Review

I just completed my first season in the 2K15 My Career mode, and after keeping copious notes while playing the games, here is my (probably not final) grade.

6.5/10

Improvement!  Not a massive one, but it's still something.  I actually feel like I wanted to give it a better grade, because I enjoyed it a lot, but after sitting down and comparing my 2K15 notes to the notes I kept over the year and a half of playing through 2K14, I realized that there were not nearly as many improvements made as perhaps initially appeared.

 I looked at it like this: I gave 2K14 a 5/10, for which there were a million reasons (seriously, have you read my 5 posts about them?), but if I were to pinpoint the two things that irritated me the most it would have to have been the ridiculously impotent passing engine and your inept teammate A.I matrices.  Again, I assume that they use matrices; but it could just be an abacus - and based purely on performance, it probably is.  For 2K15, they tweaked those mathematical formulas on the offensive and defensive ends, leading to massive improvements in the overall game-play.  

So why not give it a higher score? 

Because those improvements, significant as they are, don't solve enough of the problems that still perennially plague the programming.  [Beat] That was probably too much superfluous alliteration.  Anyway, my point is that while much of the offense has been fixed, insofar as your teammates abilities to play like actual professional basketball players is concerned - rather than the 3rd grade city-league All-Star backups like which they played in 2K14 - the passing engine is still the sort of nonsense up with which we should not be forced to put!  (Big shout out to the long-dead Sir Winston Churchill on that odd but ultimately grammatically superior phrasing).  Seriously, the passing is just about the worst I've ever encountered in a basketball game.  I've already enumerated the myriad ways in which it infuriates me, so I'll simply say this: I should never have to scream at my television that if I, as a low-level pickup-ball player, could easily have made a certain pass which ended up as a turnover in the game, then certainly an NBA player could be expected to be able to make the same pass.  2KSports, as it turns out, does not agree with me on that score.

Let's hit the rest of it as quickly as possible.

Movement and Animations

• The overall movement has improved slightly, but not significantly.  It's still nearly impossible to change directions, and given the number of times you'll be put out of position defensively simply by trying to actually maintain  correct positioning, that remains a huge issue.  
• There is still a hilariously persistent input lag on when trying for a steal, on block attempts, and jumping for rebounds.
• You still lunge in the wrong direction more often than not when attempting a steal.
• They finally added actual foul animations, which is great; because now you no longer have to make the Tim Duncan foul face every time you're whistled for a foul: you can actually see it occur, and there really is no ground for reasonable argument upon the matter.  Then again, there rarely is in an actual NBA game either, but that doesn't stop them from trying.
• My athleticism stats are nearly maxed, and I still can't outrun slow-moving centers like Marc Gasol in transition.  

Offensive A.I problems

• The alley-oops still suck, and the angles are almost always wrong.  For some reason, and I'm thinking that the reason is because the developers at 2KSports have never actually watched an NBA game, it is basically impossible to throw an oop pass to any player unless you're both running in transition.  Never mind that certain players have made their careers off of catching - and subsequently finishing - such plays in the set, half-court offense.  Sometimes the pass will get stolen, sometimes it will go sailing through your teammate's hands as he tries to finish the wide-open dunk, and most often the big man will simply stop cutting to the basket altogether, as he instead watches the orange-leather ball sail through the air while contemplating the mysteries of theoretical astro-physics.  Again, that's just a theory, but at least I've got one.  
• But the best part about the anemic alley-oop?  Every single one of these problems has existed for multiple generations of the NBA 2K series.  I actually have a real theory for why they never bother to fix the issues - aside from the obvious, but ultimately non-constructive reason of your regular, every-day money-grubbery.  I think they realize that if they made the alley-oop passes and catches realistically accurate, it would expose how weak the defensive coding actually is, allowing players to basically just run from one alley-oop to another.  (Which, by the way, would be just about the best thing ever.  Did you ever play NBA Street Volumes 1 or 2?  Still the most consistently fun basketball games ever made.  Volumes 3 and 4?  Sucked as much as the New York Knicks' 2014-2015 season.  So I guess the choice of cover athlete was eerily prescient.

That's not a jab at Melo, exactly, but I mean...he took the money that "allowed" that team to be what it currently is, so...

• When double teamed, your teammate who's man is double teaming you will still run completely away from you and the open position in which he had been standing, motionless, just a moment before when you decided to throw caution to the wind, pray to the 2KSports basketball gods, and attempt a pass.  He won't stop at just running from the open shot, though: he'll run to the completely opposite end of the court and behind three defenders - like the game thinks you want an isolation.  But you didn't: you wanted him to at the very least stay put, or even better, start running towards either your or the basket to enhance the passing angles.  But he doesn't, because video game gods don't exist, so you just turn the ball over instead.
• The difficulty in successfully recording a steal compared with the ease with which you commit turnovers is still rather staggering.  
• Once more, to reiterate a point made in my 2K14 review: I shouldn't have to call for the ball when I'm wide open on the fast break, or when we have a 3 on 2 advantage in transition, especially when the damn point guard has the ball (I mean, it's not as if the 3 man weave drill was ever actually utilized in a real, in-game situation anyway, right?); but it sure as hell shouldn't slow me down when I do.
• You still don't spot up around the 3 point line correctly.  You know what the worst shot in basketball is?  If you've ever played, then you already do; if you haven't, you'll understand why it is with very little thought.  It's the foot-on-the-3-point-line Long 2-pointer; or as I like to call it, the Jason Kidd special, which could easily be a 3 but for 1 inch of incorrect foot placement.  (I couldn't find a video on youtube to demonstrate why I chose Jason Kidd as the official representative of this shot, but trust me: it happened a lot).  But in the NBA 2K universe, it still appears with startling regularity, like Crazy Kanye West putting in an appearance when everyone thought that Regular Kanye had been scheduled.  

Random Gameplay Issues

• I really like the player upgrade system in this installment; it's not as precise, but that's fine.  Improving in one area on the basketball court actually has an impact in other areas, so I like the block of skills rather than upgrading a specific ability.  If you spend an hour a day shooting free throws, not only are you going to turn into a pretty damn good free throw shooter, but you'll find that your jumpshot - as long as your forms on either are in any reminiscent of the other, which by the way, they should be for this exact reason - will go in more often.
• I do, however, have one complaint: why is your ability to finish "Running Layups" stuck with the post-up skills?  Every point guard in the league can complete some pretty crazy lay-ups without knowing how to do even a simple post up move.  I get that they didn't want to lump it with the athleticism skills and shooting skills, otherwise upgrading either one of them might be too advantageous for a balanced upgrading system, but it doesn't work in it's current location.
• Also, for some odd reason my right-handed player can only finish layups with his left hand.  It actually adds a frightening level of realism, because ever since I got fat I can't finish a layup on the right side of the basket to save my life, but my lefties go in like...things that are successful more often than they aren't.
• They fixed the technical foul-is-always-a-turnover issue, but with an unforeseen aftershock: now you can pick up an unlimited number of technical fouls.  Seriously: just say one of two specific cursed phrases loud enough for your kinect to pick it up as the other team is passing the ball in from the previous technical foul, and you can rack them up all night.  I made it up to 16 once before I got sick of it.  Either way, 'Sheed, watch your back: I'm gunning for that record like Wilt Chamberlain circa any moment in his entire playing career.
• The box that pops up letting you know that the game "needs" an update...why exactly does it "need" to stay on the screen in the middle of the game?  You let me know that you have a new little 2K Video blurb to add to the menu and I appreciate it; can I get back the game now free of the visual obstruction your little memo-box represents?
• The responses to interviews are worse than ever.  Not only are there fewer options from which to choose than ever - ask anyone who's ever played all 3 of the main Fable games how not-great that feels - but the selections are more innocuous than determining the gender of an overweight hipster with a transgender hair-cut.  
• For some reason, you can no longer simulate playoff games.  I'm not sure what that reason would be, but I suppose that, given the shitty inconsistency of the simulation matrices, that's probably an improvement.  
• The Coach's directives often seem impossible to complete.  My (least) favorite is the "dump the ball in to the big men and let them go to work" directive, because no matter how many times I pass the ball into a posted-up big man, I still get an "F" for the directive grade.  
• Another weird one: "Cut the lead down to 5.  You have 4 minute to complete this directive."  I don't know, I just feel like...if I cut the lead down to 5 in 4 minutes and 2 seconds, wouldn't my coach actually be just as pleased as he would have been 2 seconds before, so long as we still have time to turn that deficit into at least a tie-game before it ends?  Absolutely he would; that's why putting an unnatural time limit on it feels forced, and - dare I say - ...unnatural.

So that's what I think of the game for now.  It definitely feels like a much more fully realized game than did its predecessor - which was rushed out to make the Xbox One release date - but the improvements aren't enough to make me forget how much I hate passing the ball in these damn games.