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‘NBA 2K21’ Review: A Streamlined MyCareer Works, But What’s Next?

NBA 2K21 has been out for just under a week and much of the talk in the 2K community has been around frustration with the shooting mechanics, which were so difficult they put out a hotfix two days after launch. That has eased the difficulty for those playing in their MyCareer and playing on All-Star difficulty and below, but online gameplay still sees some horrendous shooting numbers as everyone adjusts to the new shot stick and a much more demanding shot bar.

We’ll have more on the online play and other modes later as we continue getting more time with the game in our hands, but here we’re going to review MyCareer mode and this year’s story arc. Much like last year, the MyCareer mode in NBA 2K21 takes you down a far more traditional path to the NBA than some previous versions of the game. You start in high school as the son of a legend in the area, playing your way through a brief high school season before heading off to one of 10 college programs, playing a season there, boosting your draft stock, and entering the NBA Draft.

It’s a far cry from the days of being a DJ-turned-streetballer who gets an invite to play in the NBA. The more traditional path makes for a pretty enjoyable buildup to your NBA career. Beyond that, this year’s career mode seems to feature fewer cut scenes — but have no fear, they’re still there for whoever is really into seeing Jesse Williams play your dad in flashbacks — that are still easy to breeze through, as you are not beholden to watching them and can skip through at your leisure.

The basic gist of your pre-NBA story is this: Your name is Junior, the son of a New Jersey high school legend who switches from football to basketball your senior year in honor of him after he passes away. You help bring your high school back to prominence (and get a minor injury in the process you get to decide whether to play through or not), and eventually pick your college. Beware, though, that if you get too aggressive skipping through cut scenes, you might end up accidentally committing to the school on the top of the list of offers.

You get a love interest this year in college, but it’s actually handled reasonably well and is just a brief sidestory in your college career before she leaves to play soccer for the Canadian international team. Your rival/friend is a kid named Hendrixx Cobb, who the announce team will inform you dubbed himself “The Experience” (get it, cause he’s named for Jimi Hendrixx). He played for your dad in AAU ball and you grew up together before he moved away, and you get to play him in a high school tournament (where he’s the top recruit) and later in college.

Once in the Draft process, you pick between your dad’s old teammate who’s been guiding you (to the chagrin of your high school coach) or a big time agent to represent you. Then you work your way through an interview and a workout before being drafted to the same team as Hendrixx Cobb, who goes No. 1 — I was taken fourth, as somehow the Dallas Mavericks had the first and fourth picks. Once you get to the NBA, things get very streamlined, which is both nice and a bit of a concern for the mode moving forward.

There are no longer lengthy cut scenes where you go meet with your agent to discuss sponsorship deals or this and that, as those have been replaced almost entirely by you just getting an email or text and negotiating a contract that way. To pick up money from your deals, you just walk to the gate at the VC agency and it gives you money, rather than having you go inside to actually talk with your agent. I don’t know if this is the product of them hustling to get the game out or a conscious decision, but it makes things much simpler and far less involved.

The Neighborhood of 2K Beach is, well, just like most other versions, just with the courts out near the beach. It has all the same things you’re used to without any new additions that I could tell — your MyCourt apartment, for example, is the same look inside as it’s been for at least a few years now. Again, I’m not sure any of these are complaints so much as warning signs of a game that has found its groove and might struggle to create something in its career mode going forward that is worthy of what will soon become a $70 price tag for the next-gen consoles.

It’s possible that the Neighborhood will beef up on the next-gen game (there are some areas currently blocked off that might be permanent or might indicate expansion) and this year’s current-gen version serves as kind of a gap year model to get them to the new consoles that provide even greater world-building opportunities. However, it’s hard to see where they go from here with the career mode without just doing the same thing over again, with a slightly different backstory and new actors cast into roles.

Part of the problem is, when they’ve taken big swings on the career mode with a non-traditional path, they’ve gotten buried for it. Whether it was the DJ fiasco with the obnoxious friend or the very strange portrayal of Fort Wayne, Indiana for the G League year, going with something off the wall to spice things up is hard to execute in a way everyone will like.

The high school to college to pros route makes the most sense to the most people and is not likely to get you yelled at on the internet, but it also limits how much you can tweak what you do from year to year without it becoming the same game. Once that happens, you run the risk of falling into the Madden trap of putting out a game that feels like a $60 roster update, and that leads to far more backlash, as EA can tell you right now.

There is so much that goes into making a sports game and there are so many modes now that it’s really hard to invest enough in one to make it excellent without risking something else being neglected. People want a great online experience, a great career mode, a great franchise/GM mode, a great MyTeam mode, and updated gameplay to make it more and more realistic. It’s an impossible challenge, but I think the answer for how they can proceed with the career mode is to simply offer multiple paths.

A choose your own adventure style would allow you to put out a similar story mode in successive years without it feeling stale if you could pick between college, playing overseas to make some money, and going to the new G League prospect team. If each of those offered a different experience, you could make your tweaks to each of those each year and, at minimum, you’d provide alternatives for those that pick up the game every year. It’d certainly take more work on the front end, but once it was built out it could be updated.

Expanding the career world in that way would make for some truly unique experiences that could give the game a different feel rather than a one-size fits all story that requires you to go through your whole career with Greg Anthony explaining how you’re trying to follow in the footsteps of your dad for the eighth time in your rookie season. The insistence on a deep backstory with a cinematic feel, rather than world-building to provide different options and experiences, is in my opinion the game’s biggest consistent misstep in the career mode.

I have no doubts there are stumbling blocks to a choose your own adventure style mode and that it’d probably take more effort, but I really think that’s the only way forward without them running into a problem of offering you the same step-by-step path each year.