Basketball fans everywhere have been eagerly anticipating the upcoming NBA 2K22. After unveiling three covers it became clear that this 2K game was going to attempt something bigger than any game had before.
It turns out that big thing will depend on what console generation the player has. The MyPlayer experience has always been a big part of playing 2K, creating your own player, going through an NBA career, and exploring “The Neighborhood” is how many people exclusively play the series. This year though instead of just going through the typical neighborhood, 2K is giving owners of the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One the opportunity to play out their MyPlayer experience on a sailing cruise ship.
ALL ABOARD THE 2K CRUISE [PS4/XB1/NSW/PC] – On the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC platforms, NBA 2K gamers will show out and compete in an all-new, dedicated basketball community – a Neighborhood built on the spacious decks of a sailing cruise ship. Explore and hoop in nautical luxury, and when the cruise docks in exotic locales throughout the Season, make your way to the Excursion counter to participate in shoreside Events – all taking place completely off the ship!
Meanwhile, owners of the new generation of consoles, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, will be going even bigger. MyPlayer has escaped the confines of the neighborhood and grown out into a huge city that players will be able to explore. This exploration will be less of an empty hub world and feature more parts to interact with such as NPC’s that give out quests. For years, the MyPlayer experience has felt more and more like a basketball RPG series and the addition of quests feels like them embracing this once again.
A LIVING, BREATHING CITY [PS5/XBS] – Step into an all-new City teeming with life, activity, and interactivity. NPCs (non-playable characters) populate the fresh City layout, while MyPLAYERs from all over the world compete in the highest level of playground basketball. An all-new Quest system for 2K22 engages MyPLAYERs with creative content while offering new ways to level up and earn rewards in this reenvisioning of the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S basketball communities.
One aspect of MyPlayer that some players love, and others dread, is the narrative from MyCareer that it is frequently attached to. Usually, players are forced to go through a cinematic tutorial or play in one throughout their career with cutscenes and story segments. The quality of these stories has ranged from bizarre but fun to painful and grating. 2K is teasing that both console generations will have a narrative of some kind in the game, but how involved that narrative is right now is anyone’s guess.
While it’s great to know that MyPlayer and MyCareer will be getting the same level of attention it’s always gotten, there are many questions about how 2K plans to improve the WNBA portion of their game. While they didn’t unveil much in the current preview they did tease that new information will be available in September for MyPlayer, MyCareer, and MyWNBA. Considering they put Candace Parker on one of the covers it feels like a safe bet that we’re going to get even more WNBA involvement in 2K22. Hopefully, we’ll learn what exactly that involvement is by the September 10 release date.