The Prelude Out Now (PS4 & X1); Post Impressions Here!

[Andrew]

If you're on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you can get an early look at NBA 2K19 and a head start on MyCAREER via The Prelude, which is out now.

PlayStation 4: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/pro ... 9PRESEASON
Xbox One: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/nba-2 ... verviewtab

Please note once again that face scanning won't work in the MyNBA2K19 app until you've logged in via The Prelude (or the full version) on your console. If you're trying out The Prelude, feel free to post your impressions in this topic!

[CarolusXCI]

Are we able to play 5v5 too?

EDIT: yes

[TwisT]

The face scan is really great this year, got mine working on the first try.

[ThePointForward]

Are we able to play 5v5 too?

EDIT: yes

Could you be more specific? Is there like a Play Now option with 2-3 teams available or is it the training 5v5 constantly interrupted by tutorials?

[mrk326]

Just downloaded, hope the 5v5 mode is not the tutorial.

[CarolusXCI]

Are we able to play 5v5 too?

EDIT: yes

Could you be more specific? Is there like a Play Now option with 2-3 teams available or is it the training 5v5 constantly interrupted by tutorials?

Training 5v5 constantly interrupted by tutorials, as far as I know.

[The X]

2KU is back but on advanced you only get interrupted every few times down court, not every 20 seconds like 2K18 Prelude.

So far so good. Looks more polished 5v5. I think this might be the game we deserved last year.

I like the new play calling on-court displays. Layup meter quite big & visible which is good.

[CarolusXCI]

I was able to easily blow-by my defender with Curry after calling an iso on the wing. With Draymond I had a harder time, mainly because for him the blow-by animations were slower. And also because for some reason I couldn't call iso for anyone but Curry.

I played it for only 5 minutes though.

[The X]

I was able to easily blow-by my defender with Curry after calling an iso on the wing. With Draymond I had a harder time, mainly because for him the blow-by animations were slower. And also because for some reason I couldn't call iso for anyone but Curry.

I played it for only 5 minutes though.

What difficulty?

[CarolusXCI]

Advanced.

Edit: I mean, I didn't check if I could change the game difficulty itself. But I selected "advanced" when the game asked at the beginning of the tutorial.

[ThePointForward]

Advanced probably limits the number of tutorial popups

[The X]

Advanced.

Edit: I mean, I didn't check if I could change the game difficulty itself. But I selected "advanced" when the game asked at the beginning of the tutorial.

Dommy is correct.

You are playing on pro difficulty.

You can change difficulty in the options/settings menu if you pause.

[CarolusXCI]

Probably yes. Unfortunatelly I only had 5 minutes to play before having to come back to work.

I'm glad I was playing only on pro difficulty, then. If the blow by is fixed, I will buy the game.

[Andrew]

The face scan app is pretty buggy and broken again this year. After it failed to process the scan and then crashed, I gave up on it. I'm not going to bother.

Especially when the first face on the last row of the pre-made faces is basically Eminem. Change the hair colour, add a beard, and it's a passable imitation of him without any further changes:



Seriously. I think that's going to have to be my face this year.

[ThePointForward]

Proposing that NLSC squad is made out of rapper faces this year.

[Andrew]

Not sure the other guys will be on board with it (and we might be giving Pro-Am a miss anyway), but I expect they'll all be generic at the very least.

[Andrew]

So yeah, I'm just going to run with this Fake Eminem character for The Prelude. I'm too amused by the silliness not to. I know I could've enter Mathers as the surname, but I wanted a close approximation for the audio, so Mathews will do. Besides, it's Bootleg Eminem, so something should be off about him.

[bluejaybrandon]

Played a round of the tutorial on Superstar difficulty. Defense is much improved. Driving with Curry on Collin Sexton was no gimme. He was able to cut off drives consistently. You may be able to spam driving but it won't get you very far (maybe one out of every 20 work to decent effect). I also feel like help defense comes over to cover much better as well. Plus the sideline isn't some invisible wall, you legitimately have to look out for it because defenders will gladly guide you out of bounds for a turnover.

Visually, it is identical to 2k18. Scans for Cedi and Sexton look good.

[PeacemanNOT]

I played 2KU a little bit, and the game has had some improvements and some flaws. Blowbys are still in the game, with it being a little harder for guys like Green and Cousins. One thing I did notice was a help defender would often come over to stop the blowby, but then that would just leave someone else open.

There was a couple of random moments where defenders would just run away from the guy I was playing and leave me wide open. It was weird but didn't happen very often.

Defenders can actually fall for pumpfakes now, which was a lot rarer last year. If you're wide open with Durant and you give a fake, guys like Cedi Osman will fall for it more often.

If you dive for the ball when its going out of bounds, players will actually try to throw the ball back in possession which they didn't do at all last year. They would always just dive on the ball but now they try and save it.

The final thing is the movement of players, and god is it ugly. Coming from Live 19's demo and seeing the amazing foot planting they have for players, it's a huge difference. Like Dee always mentions players look like they're playing on an ice rink, skating all over the place. Guys like Curry and Durant and their leaner frames really stick out when they're floating across the court. A real eye sore.

The graphics are the exact same. Looking at the lighting is basically pointless since it's not a proper arena. One thing I did notice was the updated Cavs wordmark being a lot smaller and more accurate to it's real life counterpart. Hopefully they updated the Cavs main jerseys to match the same wordmark size of the real life jerseys.

Overall, the game has had some improvements but it hasn't changed drastically. The thing I'm most excited for is the updated retro jerseys which I pointed out in another thread...

[bluejaybrandon]

I played 2KU a little bit, and the game has had some improvements and some flaws. Blowbys are still in the game, with it being a little harder for guys like Green and Cousins. One thing I did notice was a help defender would often come over to stop the blowby, but then that would just leave someone else open.

What difficulty were you playing on?

I don't think it is a knock that leaving someone else's man open happens. That's part of basketball. If your teammate gets beat and you cheat over to help, naturally your own man will be more open. It's a risk that the man driving will pass instead of go up. I'm way more comfortable with help defense occasionally because that means the blow-by defense is improved.

[Dee4Three]

The final thing is the movement of players, and god is it ugly. Coming from Live 19's demo and seeing the amazing foot planting they have for players, it's a huge difference. Like Dee always mentions players look like they're playing on an ice rink, skating all over the place. Guys like Curry and Durant and their leaner frames really stick out when they're floating across the court. A real eye sore.

It isn't just an eyesore either, it hurts the flow of the game. It makes the game feel/look out of control, and it also makes you as the user feel out of control.

I'll never understand why this was implemented with the new motion system, or why it wasn't fixed for 2K19.

[[Q]]

Do you get to play in China in this? Otherwise, there's no real interest in this for me. It's free, but it takes time to download and install haha

[JaoSming]

Yep

[PeacemanNOT]

I played 2KU a little bit, and the game has had some improvements and some flaws. Blowbys are still in the game, with it being a little harder for guys like Green and Cousins. One thing I did notice was a help defender would often come over to stop the blowby, but then that would just leave someone else open.

What difficulty were you playing on?

I don't think it is a knock that leaving someone else's man open happens. That's part of basketball. If your teammate gets beat and you cheat over to help, naturally your own man will be more open. It's a risk that the man driving will pass instead of go up. I'm way more comfortable with help defense occasionally because that means the blow-by defense is improved.

I was playing on HOF. It makes sense in a real life basketball situation obviously, but in a game where it's user controlling who can make cheesy moves around the basket it basically means when a blowby does occurs it's an automatic basket. Reminds me of those user plays a couple of years ago where no matter the outcome there would always be an open player and an easy basket, just because of how the defenders react to the play, and in this case the blowby.

But right now it definitely seems like blowbys are a lot harder, so as long as they don't happen very often, it's reasonable and realistic.

[ThePointForward]

Alright after a very, very long day at work I got home and + I have some positives and some negatives.

Positives:

• Story so far definitely seems way, way less corny.
• Skipping cutscenes actually works and is done well.
• Some of the complaints definitely got solved.
• Scripted plays did not seem too intrusive - the 10 point lead was both believable and nicely implemented into the game.
• The appearance customization is a nice feature.
• This was super satisfying (I'm sharpshooting shot creator SG, aka Kobe reborn):
  phpBB [video]

Negatives:

• When I momentarily lost connection the game simply quit the game without any saving and booted me into main menu. That was annoying.
• The old NBA 2K minigame was bad, half of the controls we are now used to simply didn't work.
• Some goals are simply out of player's reach - in the first game the opposing star scored 4 points while I was guarding him. He still got 25 total while I was not playing or when he was guarded by others (I was SG). And I lost against the NBA stars after my teammates just decided to give away the ball 3 times in a row.
• Fouls not called, if I did that bump in local league I'd get slapped with intentional foul - 2 technicals and possession of the ball. 2K just didn't call it and in one case lead to turnover.
  
  • phpBB [video]
  • phpBB [video]

Tweeted those two videos at Mike Wang, hopefully he'll notice.