At first glance, I fell in love with NBA 2K14. The graphics are golden, the gameplay is near identical to a fantastic current-gen release, and My GM has all of the potential in the world. Safe to say, the hype seems well worth it and necessary for 2K's first next-gen conquest.

I say near identical for a few reasons. During gameplay, a lot of classic 2K bugs have resurfaced. Players are morphing into one another; Ray Allen is standing out of bounds in the corner and won't move; passing turns the ball over more than it should (this may be more of a realism factor than anything, so don't freak out yet).

These issues can be a game-killer, but 2K fixed all of these problems in the past so I fully expect them to fix these in the coming months with a series of patches, especially after they told me they are currently working on the game's second patch. No timetable for the release of the patch as of yet, though.

Other than those issues, the gameplay is exactly what you'd expect out of 2K. Everything from current gen is in, including flashy passes. Momentum feels like it's changed a little bit, or the maybe player weight isn't accounted for as much as it has in the past. Iso moves will leave you grinning from ear-to-ear after you break your roommate's ankles (or vice-versa).

Eco-Motion makes each game seem different, and it's noticeable. Russell Westbrook beat Kyrie Irving on a breakaway dunk for and and-1, and later in the same quarter Irving was able to prevent Westbrook from doing the same, stripping the ball out of bounds.

But the beauty lies in the third interaction: when Westbrook and Irving were pitted in the same situation (I'm like Tony Wroten - turnovers are my vice), Westbrook pulled up for his signature jumper (you know, the one he takes all the time but really shouldn't) rather than attempt to go to the bucket around Irving.

Server Issues

But I do have gripes so far, and it lies around 2K's servers and how they respond to a less than stellar internet connection.

I've had issues with the servers since the day after plugging in the PlayStation 4 - but that's my fault. Any time I connected to the servers, the loading process would never come to an end, or the file would load incompletely. Each time I had to restart the application.

I originally thought something happened with the game's installation. I uninstalled, re-installed, and everything worked again for an evening. I was wrong. I lowered my Internet speed to 15-20 mbs from 40-50 mps the day after release. It saved me enough money to justify the downgrade, and 20 mps has never been slow, but it also killed my experience with 2K.

With the already shotty servers being slow and troublesome to begin with, anything less than a solid connection can kill these game modes. I figured this out by switching over to Need for Speed: Rivals and not being able to do anything with online racers. This morning I upgraded my Internet back to where it was, and the servers started working OK once more. I've quickly learned that not needing Internet to play on the new generation of consoles is an absolute farce.

The full review for NBA 2K14 will release this weekend. Now that I have the capabilities to play the game modes, I can dig deep and see what might be inside this Pandora's Box.