sticky-fingers wrote:i would add NBA2K15 in the debate. Unfortunately, we had few tools and mods back then.
But gameplay and AI are IMO the best on this gen with 2K16. I was pleasantly surprised to see the CPU call a double team on KD when Robertson was on the court. But no double team when he was replaced by a shooter.
2K16 was around when I started picking up NBA2K again on a more regular basis. Really good game and I would say a significant drop to where we are today despite the fact that 2K20 looks really nice. I say "really nice" because I actually find all the player models and animations incredibly robotic and non-human. And on the PS5 I think the drop is even more pronounced, I may be only one of a few who thinks so but I do know a few people who agree with me. Because now on the PS5 in addition to feeling inhuman, everyone looks made of plastic. When are game developers gonna learn that people don't move their eyeballs to the left and right without their heads turning in some way? It's like the NHL series. Yes, it looks pretty good. But they've somehow managed to make everyone look like non-interactive zombies that don't interact with the world around them. It's like they're in their own little bubble. The moment games moved to realistic player models, they lost the more "animated" look which while maybe less realistic, permitted them to be designed better. Like the debate about the animated and CGI Lion King. In the newer film the characters all just look dead behind the eyes. And the movements ridiculous because a cartoon can display anthropomorphic movements and we don't mind, it's a cartoon, it's understood that there is a willing suspension of disbelief about what they can do. But a CGI lifelike character looks weird doing that because you've established they're meant to be lifelike, so why is a CGI wild boar smiling? Likewise with faces that grimace or smirk and then snap back to their default half asleep, generic mannequin mode which happens in current sports games. Also weird is characters that do a little business with a ball or their uniforms and then snap back to "Generic Model Standing Still Position X". And why do players jump into the same slow-motion, canned "oops, I've lost my balance" animation when they bump into something regardless of what they've bumped into with no regard for what inertia is doing to their bodies? And then while standing back upright have their feet slide into a predetermined position. In previous gen this didn't look so bad and it's because things were not made to look so realistic whether by intention or lack of technology (I don't like the term photo-realistic, it's a term that is heavily misused online).
I'm on a bit of a tangent here, excuse me, but for me, despite the lighting and depth of field, characters in PS5 sports games look literally made of wax and I have to be honest, the lighting, chroma, effects are exaggerated and perhaps this bothers me more because I'm a filmmaker and cinematographer. I don't mind it when people play with lighting in fantasy, action, or more cinematic video games, but when studios get people who don't understand traditional lighting and optics to do lighting for sports games, it's very trying for me to not rail against it. All this is why I get a more pure, ironically more true to life experience when I play the last gen PC NBA series than the current one and even on the gameplay footage I've seen of Madden, FIFA, and NBA2K on the PS5. Or as my wife put it the other day when she was looking at NBA 2K20 PC footage, "These characters look physically more like their real life counterparts but they're incredibly awkward to look at. The older games you play look more on the surface like video games, but players feel and move more like real NBA players even with their jerky movements". We watch lots of sports together even though we don't play sports games when we play games together, so she's well versed enough to say what does and doesn't look and feel realistic in sports games. So, I think it's an interesting observation from someone who doesn't know sports video games much more than seeing them when I play and only has televised sports to compare to.
Anyway, I play 2K11, 13, and 14 and I don't have this issue of the game looking and feeling awkward. The problem, which I was hoping to find help for by researching, is that I can't figure out between those three if one is particularly better for representing basketball. In the NHL2K series, 2K8, 2K10, and 2K6 are the three stars of the series (ignoring 2K5 only because of a lack of up to date rosters). 2K10 looks the best and has the best physics/feel despite some cartoony animations, but you need a degree in slider-ology to get it to play well and when you get it right, it's absolutely brilliant. 2K8 look absolutely atrocious, the menu UI is infuriating, but on-ice the game is well animated, and there are nuances only a true sim hockey fan would love in gameplay, strategy, and controls. 2K6 is dated in look, and needs tweaking to tone down the pace and energy, but plays an amazing and fun game that feels a little dead in UI and limited in controls. But ALL three have amazing strategy manipulation in-game. So, for me 2K10 is the way to go. Because in addition to all of that, much like MLB2K12, it just feels so true to life playing along in a season with the commentary and fun things to follow in the news portions of the season menus. This is all single player offline season mode/exhibition only. I have no clue about franchise play, trade or draft AI, I play only season mode with all that stuff and injuries off. That's the sort of thing I'm looking to understand about the PC NBA2K previous-gen era. And just to turn back around to the cheese stuff, it all seems geared to online multiplayer as with videos on Youtube. Watched a "review" of 2K20 the other day and literally two 45 second sentences talked about on-court gameplay, physics, and mechanics in an 8 minute video.
Anyway, my point is that all this visual stuff for me is part of what games gets qualified as "greatest".