helping you live out your dream season with your favorite team. Having
received my NBA 2K17 review copy, I took it upon myself to explore
this latest addition.
If you are a huge NBA fan, then you will definitely want to include
this game on your Christmas wish list because it is packed with a lot
of really cool additions and features.
Admitedly the overall structure of MyCareer mode has not changed much
since last year. You create a custom player, play through a few
college games then end up drafted and in the NBA. Once there, through
a combination of practice and playing in games, you improve your stats
on the way to becoming one of the best in the league.
That's all managed via a calendar, which divides your time between
workouts, games, personal events (you can meet friends, some of whom
are NBA players) and sponsors engagements. Some of these can be
skipped or simulated, others can't, and generally the game wants you
to do as many things as it's offering you.
The only big change to how this all works in 2K17 is that you now get
repeated clashes in your schedule; an invite to a comic convention
from an NBA superstar , for example, might clash with a team practice.
You've got to choose which event's benefits (maybe extra fans or cash)
outweigh the negative results (an angry coach and less playing time)
of skipping the other.
On the court, there's some good stuff here. While the visuals and feel
of the game are barely-changed from 2K16 —not that this is bad thing,
since no other sports game is as good at nailing the physical contact
and interactions between athletes—there's a new feature where the
off-court friendship between your character and Justice Young evolves
into an on-court bonus mode.
Play well together and you'll unlock ORANGE JUICE mode (yes, that's
its name, it's what the two main characters call their partnership), a
temporary boost where you get to control both characters instead of
one, swapping between them at the push of a button like a very
expensive recreation of NBA Jam.
The game's biggest problem is the practice activities you need to take
part in during the career mode.
NBA 2K17 was reviewed using a PlayStation 4 copy and code provided by 2K Games.
