Download 2k20 Basketball
Raffi Bramlett
NBA 2K20 is a basketball simulation video game based on the National Basketball Association games. It is the 21st installment in the highly popular NBA 2K franchise and the successor to NBA 2K19. Just like the previous games in the series, you mainly play NBA games with real-life or customized players and teams, and the games follow the rules and objectives of NBA games. This time in 2K20, a new feature called MyCAREER lets you live a cinematic player campaign.
Hello good chums and welcome back to "What's the Greatest." Now this little episode was actually supposed to come before Ni No Kuni, but I bumped it because having just completed NNK, I had a lot to say. The small warning about this episode, is that it is very much about basketball (obviously). If you are not a fan of sports games, Basketball, or the ilk.. then feel free to ignore this.
Baseketball has always been my sport of choice. I played football in high-school mainly at the behest of my dad, but basketball is what I watched on TV, what I was able to organize with my friends, and frankly what was more fun. That meant that whenever I got a new console, one of the first games I had to get was in fact a basketball game. To me that meant that I had 100s of hours waiting for me, because its my comfort food, and I could play it at any time. Having kids this is even more true now than before. I have twins aged 2, and I can't steal myself away to play games until after they go down for a nap or bed. Usually by that point, I'm either too drained to play a game more engaging, or I only have an hour to play games. Nothing fits that hour better than a 40 minute Basketball game where I can turn my mind off.
Now before I get into my review/ranking, I need to set the stage. I probably don't play the NBA games like how many other people play them, nor how 2k would like me to play them. I don't spend a fortune wasting my time on virtual cards (that have degradation). I don't participate in the online scene at all (in the park, or just matchmaking), because I feel that the NBA games are incredibly toxic online (probably true about all games, right now). I don't even do a my career, especially since 2k basically put that behind a paywall to incentivize people to shell out money to make a fake video game character better. What I do is simply create a myleague, and play through season after season of basketball games. In some versions of my league, I include all historic players to create an epic league of talent, in others I take an expansion squad from inception to greatness. In both games being talked about I have logged over 100 hours in each of them, but if you are here to talk about drop rates on diamond cards, or how your 3v3 player is dope, I can't really engage. Anyway, onwards.
Normally I would break these games into different sections talking about the merit of each one, but they are both so similar that I feel the only way to talk about them is to compare the two. Normally I would not buy two games so close in year, but 2k20 was free on PS+ and I'm not going to turn down a free NBA game. However, just this short jump in time showed me the direction of where this series is going, and why I might not be on board for much longer.
Lets look at another example: You are on a fast break with the ball, a 2 on 1 situation, you are waiting for your teammate to break to the hoop where you will pass for an easy dunk or layup, however the defender engages you with the ball. You quickly hit the pass button, what happens? In 2k18, assuming you didn't have the ball stolen from you, then your character would pass the ball and a dunk or layup would happen. Even if you were heavily guarded, you probably 80% or more can make the pass and get your desired result. In 2k20, that depends on the animation priority. Did that defender cause you to bobble the ball, did you pick it up from a dribble, did they bump you slightly? Any of those will cause your character to delay in passing the ball while the animation plays out, while this might result in the same result (dunk or layup) it now probably means that another defender has caught up and you are no longer wide open. That 80% in 2k18 is now probably down to a 60% to make the same play. That's still better than half, but the times you miss those are going to be nightmares for you in close games.
In real life both of those plays make more sense in the 2k20 version, it is realistic as might be its first priority, but in doing so, it may have taken a little more fun out of the game to do so. I could go into other examples but lets move on.
Since the 2k series started (on the dreamcast) and I have been sinking my time into them, I usually find that I can play at a higher difficulty than normal. I know tricks that have worked in multiple versions, I have a good handle on the controls, etc. When I finished my time with 2k18, I was doing regular seasons at All-Star difficulty (one up from normal) and playoff games at superstar (two up from normal). Regular season games meant that I could probably win 90% as long as I stay focused and play smart, and playoff games meant I could win probably 75% of the time, but I had to really get into the game. I never want to win every game, and I want a challenge, but a fair one, one that I feel I can lose if the other team gets hot or I just make dumb mistakes. In 2k20 I have barely moved it off of normal, and instead have gone through and edited custom sliders to parts of the game I think are broken. Somewhere down the line, the people at 2K have gotten so involved in watching people play their games on twitch or youtube, people who have sunk money and time into perfectly timing their release, that those of us you average more "greats" than "excellents" were left out in the cold. Shots outside of the perfect window were more often than not going to miss, and the computer A.I would not let a lesser player drive past them or get really any separation. It became a slog, as to compete and win games meant riding my highest rated player over and over again because anyone less was going to shoot 30% and lose the game. Now I didn't just up the slider for my shot to fall, I upped it for the computer as well, because watching them brick open jumpers was just as annoying as it was to brick them myself. I didn't come to a game to only play as Lebron against scrubs. Even now, 100 hours in, I am stuck playing on a difficulty I feel is more fun, but is a little easy, versus more challenging, but unfair. In the times I have scaled up the difficulty (going from custom sliders to all-star) everything about my game drops, and despite fiddling with customer sliders after every few hours with the game, I apparently haven't found the perfect setup.
There isn't really much else to cover, at least with regards to what I care about, these are two games sitting close to the precipice of where 2k games came from and where they are heading. 2k18 is a great basketball game that while has most of the trappings of a simulation basketball game, still plays a little fast and loose with what a human can do. 2k20 is leaning harder into realism and its E-sport and fanatical fan base. Like most sport titles now, the desire is not to appease the fan of just the NBA or NFL or FIFA, because those suckers have nowhere else to go, but is instead to appease the fans that are championing these games on social media. The ones that have perfected the moves, and can hit perfect releases more often than not. Those of us just wanting to see if the San Diego Surf expansion team can topple the Lakers are left sitting on the bench. I hear 2k21 is worse than 2k20, with even harder shot mechanics and even more focus on the park and cards. I never thought I would root for EA to come back to basketball, but maybe some competition would be nice.
Where do they rank: I would personally argue that I like a little more arcade in my sports titles, I have 2k18 ranked as the #3 rated game out of 18. Which is below #2 Super Spike V-Ball, and above #4 That's You!.. For 2k20 I have it as the #8 greatest game out of 18. It is below #7 The Lost Vikings, and above #9 Blast Corps.
My problem with the series - setting aside the focus on MyPlayer, which has always felt awkward to me, and MyTeam, which is as cynical as game development can get and I've ranted at length about in the past - is that it's so clearly still the game it was a decade ago as it attempts to simulate not just modern basketball, but all eras of basketball. In other words, the full 5-on-5 single player experience feels like it's trying to cater to the entirety of basketball all at once and it just crumples under the weight.
The court is too small in relation to the sizes of the characters and the A.I. seems like it can't decide whether it's playing grit-n-grind '00s basketball or pace-and-space '10s basketball from second to second. I suppose I shouldn't expect to be as good as I once was considering how little I play now, but I used to play the CPU on Superstar regularly in the PS2 and PS3 era but like you rarely venture outside of Pro or All-Star with custom sliders when I do give the game a go. Not only does the player team's A.I. seem confused but the opposite feels true for the other side.
If MyTeam were even half as generous as MLB's version - which, notably, also has no competition - I'd be endlessly addicted to it. I only care about a specific era of baseball, the 90s, but all of basketball history. Unfortunately, I realized how predatory their model is when I finally decided to give it a go with 2K18 and found myself spending an additional $300 on the game in a single weekend. Unlike MLB, almost everything is locked behind a currency singular to that mode and the best way to earn that currency is to try to turn the game into NBA Jam and abuse odd quirks in its programming.
It's a shame that baseball isn't the international phenomenon that football/soccer, basketball and football/football are because if more sports gamers were exposed to The Show's model the other games' subreddits would resemble the Paris Revolution lol.
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