By the time I was in my preteen years, my passion and interest for professional basketball had come into full view. Around that same time, a little video game developer, known as Electronic Arts, was, also, coming into its own. They had seen success with the advent and growth of “Madden Football,” but now they were setting their sights on other, mainstream American sports. By 1993, the “NBA Live” series was a regular part of sports-related gaming and I could seemingly NOT get enough of it. I was all in!

Fast-forward to 2018. “NBA Live” is mostly just a happy, nostalgic memory and the vast majority of my time spent with video games has little or nothing to do with sports. Yes, I was a considerable fan of the “Fight Night” series, which is professional boxing, but I had not owned or played any sort of NBA-related video game since 2011. Furthermore, I had given up on “NBA Live,” going back at least 12 years. At THAT time, I was investing in the new Xbox 360 and was looking for whatever I could get my hands on, in the way of new gaming experiences. It just so happened, at the time, that “NBA 2K” was getting its latest facelift, formerly as an exclusive Sega Sports entity and as an ESPN gaming franchise.

Today, the “2K” series is king, in the realm of NBA video gaming simulators. Visual Concepts has been the developer since the beginning and it is aptly-named. Although, gameplay is extremely vital to the gaming experience, consider THAT the human equivalent of what is “skin-deep.” We are first drawn towards what we can experience with the senses. These are the graphics and sound. Together, they all complete the total package, figuratively and literally.

The biggest challenge for these types of games is making sure that each annual release has a distinctive look, compared to its predecessors. 20-plus years ago, advancements seemed to change significantly, from year-to-year. Perhaps not the graphics or sound, so much as the available features, within the entry. To this day, I still remember “NBA Live ‘95” more than any of the other titles of that series, simply because it added an expansive “player creation” mode. NO game, of pretty much any genre, can thrive these days without some type personalized creation feature. I am not exaggerating!

With that said, in the case of “2K,” the level of creation has become extremely vast. Creating a player has become so detailed, now, that it can take something like 30 to 45 minutes just to complete everything, if not longer. Simplicity has become an underrated quality in gaming, to some degree. Although customization can be a lot of fun, if you do not get favorable results, it is, then, a big waste of time and energy. So, from that point-of-view, I think the team/franchise creation aspect is better than the create player feature, at this point.

There are two things that have seemingly NOT changed, for me, when playing this game, compared to back in 2011: frustrating player development (or lack there of) in the creation of my player(s) and still some issues with a sluggish feel when controlling the players while playing on the courts. In the ‘90s, there was great fluidity and ease in customizing my players and controlling them as I played the actual games. Maybe it was not as realistic as the games are today, but maybe the games have become TOO realistic to be as enjoyable for someone like me. I wonder if there is a compromise that can be achieved. Is it actually possible that I need to give the “NBA Live” franchise a fresh look?

I must say, however, that once I began playing the games in “NBA 2K19,” I DID enjoy myself. I can rarely get off a “good” shot, if you know what I mean, but perhaps everyone else has a similar problem and you just learn to live with it. It is hard for me to say what is better about this game, compared to last year’s entry or the last one that I owned. I know that I have a tendency to be picky about certain aspects, in general. Apparently, it is not limited to the way I view movies, either. What I have discovered is that it is easier to go back to games and change my mind about how I feel about them, compared to films. Certainly, I would be just as open to that with this game, as any other.

For the hardcore fans of this series, based on what others have said, it is an improvement from last year’s game, but not a massive improvement. With that being said, no one who plays these games regularly is really complaining about the quality of the games, themselves. The biggest and most common complaint is in the supposed “micro-transactions” within the game. I can definitely get on board with that. Yes, I agree that this type of business practice seems exploitive to the gamers. Over time, that could become a big enough issue to turn off the fans, altogether. That will come down to principles, though, which everyone seems to be inconsistent with, but that is also a conversation to have at another time.

Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K Sports
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Genre: Sports
Modes: single-player, multi-player
Release: September 11th, 2018