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Best Basketball sim, hands down

Tue Sep 02, 2025 12:40 am

I am a huge fan and I've been playing NBA games since forever. 2K26 is almost perfect. For the first time in the history of basketball sims speed matters. A faster player will pass by or make it difficult for a slower guy to guard him. Amazing game guys. The graphics are perfect.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Sun Sep 07, 2025 9:44 pm

elsoulas wrote:I am a huge fan and I've been playing NBA games since forever. 2K26 is almost perfect. For the first time in the history of basketball sims speed matters. A faster player will pass by or make it difficult for a slower guy to guard him. Amazing game guys. The graphics are perfect.


I'm glad you liked and enjoyed it, but there is no perfect game. However, the real test is when they start patching things. Usually, something changes the game dynamics after a patch. We'll see ..

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Sun Sep 07, 2025 11:04 pm

I think its right up there in terms of one of my favourite 2k on ps4, the gameplay although missing a lot of features that the ps5 version has it definitely holds up although patches can be a blessing and curse to a game like 2k.

For the ps4 version I dont want the gameplay touched at all really but I won't lie about the fact that 2k didnt update the Utah Jazz rebranding was a disappointment.
The Magic and Clippers got there new courts and jerseys updated in recent years but not the Jazz

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Mon Sep 08, 2025 2:45 am

I just bought it. From the images I've seen of the game, what you say seems to be true. Now I'll try it out. I haven't bought an NBA game since 2K20 because I felt they were all worse and didn't show much progress. This PC version also looks good graphically. I think this year we have a good foundation for those of us who enjoy offline play and adding mods. We'll see.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Wed Sep 10, 2025 1:38 am

It's literally identical to 2k25, minus the arena changes and giving it that lighting of 2K14, they add a few new cyberfaces for The W, and all the gameplay modes, cutscenes are identical.
All they did was change the cosmetics of the menu's etc. It's literally 2k25.5.

They added more animations to make the players move a little more, but now in Play Now the Ai is dumb, they aren't running plays anymore and just stand around. Some kind of way they made the cpu controlled players worse.

Everything primarily was focused on online modes and VC, other than that, not much here.

Face Scan completely removed from The W, they have a little more options on creating a face, including better hair. But basically just added to the few they had in 2k25.
Face Scan for men's doesn't work the app is useless on iPhone and Android, the gameplay is horrible and shot meter is horrendous and fast for no reason.

Players stand out of bounds and hard to pass to them, sometimes they are open, you'll pass the ball to them and they'll pass back out, instead of taking open shots.

This game is just bad, refunded, thank good for refunds if you don't play more than 2 hours.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Wed Sep 10, 2025 9:28 pm

It is amazing that 2k has a huge team working on next gen (current gen) but do many things are overlooked, the latest ive seen and its dont get me wrong it is easily fixable and doesn't effect gameplay but I saw on X someone post a picture of a cutscreen from myplayer where they have a billboard advert for the Bucks "fear the deer" showing Giannis of course in his Bucks uniform but they also have Kris Middleton in a wizards jersey and Dame in his Blazers.

Like I said it doesn't effect the gameplay and easy to patch but standards are slipping at 2k

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Sun Sep 14, 2025 3:35 am

this game is completely horrible and this is mostly to the "new" shooting mechanics. They took out options, for online league games you basically need to play with "green or miss" without any other possibility that we had last year (like realfg% or low risk/high risk shooting). Everybody is making every shot if its open and that completely breaks the game balance.

Also a lot of little minor stuff is not working even if it had worked in last years game. so annoying...looking forward to 2k27 in the hope that this is better again...

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Sun Sep 14, 2025 3:57 am

Yeah I heard online now you cant use real player % which sucks if that's the mode people like to play the most as shot timing ive seen seems a little off the shots ive seen people make when heavily guarded by 3 players.

I only play offline vs the cpu nowadays and didnt even try the new shot system I just turned it straight off

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Tue Sep 16, 2025 8:48 pm

I have to confess that I can't stand the defense in this game. It's just poorly designed; you can't defend well in 1-on-1 situations. And it doesn't even have the controller option that other years have had to help with defensive assistance.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Mon Sep 22, 2025 11:11 am

I'm not enjoying the game in general and am not optimistic that I'll be playing much of it, but I am glad to hear that others are having a better time.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Tue Sep 23, 2025 6:59 am

Andrew wrote:I'm not enjoying the game in general and am not optimistic that I'll be playing much of it, but I am glad to hear that others are having a better time.

The only problem I see is that since they released version 1.4, the game runs much worse for me and inexplicably stutters from the third quarter onwards. I hope they fix it. As for the GP, I think that with some good sliders, it can be a lot of fun and very realistic.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Tue Sep 23, 2025 1:44 pm

I definitely need to try some slider tweaks, but generally speaking I'm not a fan of how the game feels, not to mention the approach to shooting and the alley-oop meter. I've not been a fan of the direction of the series for years now. So yeah, as I said I'm not optimistic, but there are a couple of things I can try.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Wed Sep 24, 2025 7:05 am

Andrew wrote:I definitely need to try some slider tweaks, but generally speaking I'm not a fan of how the game feels, not to mention the approach to shooting and the alley-oop meter. I've not been a fan of the direction of the series for years now. So yeah, as I said I'm not optimistic, but there are a couple of things I can try.


What's the best title of the most recent ones in your opinion?

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Wed Sep 24, 2025 12:18 pm

The last one I put a decent amount of hours into was NBA 2K21. Candidly, I haven't really, truly enjoyed a new game in the series since NBA 2K20.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Wed Sep 24, 2025 3:11 pm

Andrew wrote:The last one I put a decent amount of hours into was NBA 2K21. Candidly, I haven't really, truly enjoyed a new game in the series since NBA 2K20.

I feel the same way. But I think this 2K is going to be bigger than 2K20. They're making a couple of tweaks to the GP that will surely be fixed with patches, and as I said, some decent sliders. Add mods to the formula... and it's going to be incredible.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:36 pm

Honestly, a lot of my issues go beyond slider tweaks or things that can be patched, because they're inherent to the design and underlying technology. But I'll see how I go.

Re: Best Basketball sim, hands down

Fri Sep 26, 2025 12:03 pm

Andrew wrote:The last one I put a decent amount of hours into was NBA 2K21. Candidly, I haven't really, truly enjoyed a new game in the series since NBA 2K20.

Yep, 2K20 post patch was fun. Biggest drawback was they added that quick draw badge and without it you couldn't get a shot off. Plus inside shot contests from behind caused you to miss layups. Otherwise I had fun with that. Was worth the free download on PS4.
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