When I booted up this new game’s career mode, I had a thought that it seemed like the best one ever. Its open-ended, almost MMO-like format of a shared open city with freedom of how you pursue your career was very promising, perhaps a legitimate fresh new take on the classic career mode. I mean, you can literally skateboard around the city past other players and do tricks. They clearly had some time to develop this thing out.

And yet, with this added scope comes an unfortunate sacrifice in the actual quality of this classic mode. While some entries over the last decade have featured memorable stories with fleshed-out journeys through high school and college or a foreign league, this game’s story must be as generic as possible to accommodate the amount of choice you get. Most of it in the early goings consists of you and your manager sitting in your apartment rattling off quips and exposition at each other.

I was excited to play an in-depth college career like has been featured in prior games. I had been finding this much more fun than the realistic early career NBA where your guy sucks and sits on the bench all game. Instead, I got to play… 1 game. With almost no story around it. Great.

I’ve realized after spending time with League of Legends of all things this year some of the reasons why this mode is so tough to swallow at times. Sports are inherently unbalanced. Teams and players are just going to be better than each other regardless of the real-life player controlling them, and there’s no comeback mechanic, no way to surrender, and so on. You’re often just trapped in hopeless situations and have to tough it out. Your guy isn’t that fun to play as compared to Steph Curry or Lebron. Your teammates make dumb decisions. You have to spend time doing drills and all this other stuff instead of what you actually came here to do. In this regard, the game is a successful basketball career simulation, but as a fun video game experience for an adult with limited time to play, I don’t think that quite works out.

TL;DR, I think this mode has gotten a little too ambitious and unfortunately has to cater a little too much to its hardcore, microtransaction-happy fanbase to be a fun single-player experience for more casual fans like it used to be.

On a positive note, the franchise / GM mode is about the same but more customizable than ever, and this has been my real favorite mode for years. So props to them for not fully giving up on that mode even though it is less popular.