NBA 2K19 (2018)

For the first time ever, I played through an entire season of a 2K game. l took the Mavs to a 12-2 record for 1st in the West, with Kristaps Porzingis winning MVP, and he and Boban Marjanovic both making it on the All-Star team. Luka Doncic was given All-NBA 2nd team honours. Great. After playing two games in the first round of the playoffs, I got bored and decided to simulate the rest of the series. To my shock and horror, the Rockets went up 3-2. I inserted myself into the final minute and a half of game 6 to try to recover, but I missed the game-winning three. The 8th-seeded Rockets went all the way to the Finals and then lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Tyreke freaking Evans won Finals MVP. Wow.

And I guess that's the first reason why I thought this game was kind of crap: the AI was horrible. And not just because it does stuff like sending the Cavs to a championship with Tyreke Evans leading the way--I mean, I actually like that it didn't just mimic exactly what plays out in real life, but really... there are like 28 other teams that should win the championship before the Cavs.

The entire time I played the game, I never really felt comfortable with the difficulty level. Either I'd play on Pro, and the other team would shoot 80% from the field and I'd have to score every single possession just to stay in the game, or I'd play on Rookie, and the other team would shoot 20% from the field and I'd win by 30... in a 12-minute game, mind you. There was no middle ground where I could run a decent offence and the other team actually missed some shots.

Getting my own teammates to do anything was a nightmare. This is where it blends from an AI problem to a target audience problem, because I'm pretty sure you actually have a lot of control over your team. It's just that doing so apparently takes complex button combinations and an in-depth knowledge of the controls. It felt like a Street Fighter game, where I had to memorize all these moves just to keep my head above water. And I suck at Street Fighter.

That's why it seemed to me like the game was targeted at gamers, not athletes. I found it difficult being successful with just my knowledge of the game and the players. I always wanted my players to do things, but I could never get them to do it. A few times I even looked up how to do specific moves, like step-backs and post-ups, but it never seemed to work when I tried to do it in the game. Other plays just didn't seem to be programmed properly. Try calling for a pick-and-pop, and the centre just sort of drifts away from you unhelpfully.

Even simple things like shooting seemed unintuitive to me. They have this little bar that tells you when to release the shoot button, but filling it to the top always seemed to give me "late". The "excellent"s seemed to be right before it hit the top of the bar, and that just doesn't make sense to me. I'd say I finally started getting the hang of it about 15 games in, but even then I would be surprised with the result sometimes, and I only got good with specific players. Try a different player, and suddenly the shooting bar moves way differently. Which makes sense because of different shooting styles, but I just could not get the hang of it.

Playing defence was impossible, but I don't feel like getting into that.

Overall I just felt like I would have to spend way too much time practicing to actually get good at the game, and all I want out of an NBA game is to be able to pick it up and play it when people are over. I'm not interested in all this MyCareer stuff, and I don't want to learn all these button combinations to execute simple moves I can just do in my men's league games on Thursday nights. I assume this is a great game for hardcore gamers, but I do not like it.

Now I need to find NBA 2005 for the Gamecube to see if it was actually more fun or if I just remember it that way.