NBA 2K19: The Comeback

By Liam Day
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Not many video game franchises can stand near the top of the charts after 20 consecutive years with annual releases. 2K recently released their latest installment, the #1 Pro Basketball video game year after year. However, the game ratings and players argue that 2K has fallen off the last three years as the developers have failed to listen to their community in fixing gameplay and frequent updates. 

One of the most important and most notable improvements is the defensive gameplay. For this aspect of the game, there was nowhere to go but up, as 2K18 was way too fluky with no consistency. So far in 2K19, players who play passing lanes and get in position to steal are much more likely to force turnovers. Junior, Mikey Small, pre ordered the game and was very satisfied stating that the game was “so much better than 18 because you can actually play defense and not get cheesed by a bunch of try hards.” Another noticeable gameplay improvement is the tuning that in-game shooting received. Too often last year players would miss open three and make highly contested ones making offense very inconsistent. In 2K18, games often turned into a battle of who could pull off a scoring move more efficiently. This made online games repetitive and required no strategy. 2K19 prevents teams from simply blowing by their opponent thanks to a much-needed buff to defense.

MyTeam might have undergone the most drastic changes. A new 3-on-3 mode called Triple Threat was introduced. It combines the feel of park, but with NBA players. This mode allows you to take your top three players and put them against other online opponents and their three-best cards.

A game-breaking addition to MyCareer is the “takeover”. When a player makes a significant amount of consecutive shots without any mistakes a takeover meter is activated. This boosts your players main badges to a point that makes it near impossible to miss. Certain badges (boosted attributes that can be boosted based on the archetype of your player) are combined to make this takeover overpowered. Sophomore, Kevin Pak said, “The pure sharpshooting takeover is OP, I literally can't lose when I get hot.” Some star players have multiple Takeover abilities as well, and though this new feature isn’t a big game-changer, it does highlight the fact that once NBA players get in rhythm, they can literally take over games.

Overall NBA 2K19 is a huge bounce-back for the 2k industry that fixes multiple gameplay problems, contains many new additions to the game such as a much longer story-mode to MYCareer, and is a must buy for those who have skipped out on recent 2k releases.