Gameplay

The strongest aspect of NBA 2K14, next to its graphics, is its gameplay. While the jump from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4 may not have improved the series' on-court behavior as significantly as fans were anticipating, few impactful flaws in the gameplay exist in the current product. The brilliant post-up system contains more moves than a bowl of Jell-O. The retooled pick-and-roll mechanic offers so many different possibilities and variable outcomes that you can literally run it every trip down the court and never become bored.

But here are some select on-court areas where NBA 2K14 leaves gamers wanting more:

• AI defenders overhelp, abandoning their man in situations where they should be staying home.
• Shooting percentages are way too high; jump shots are too easy to make.
• Too many guards are taking and making running floaters.
• Too many post players are taking and making spinning baseline fadeaways.
• Fouls lead to too many missed shots and too few “and-ones.”
• Players' movement and dribbling animations remain marred by sliding and warping.
• Defenders' hands regularly clip through the ball instead of knocking it loose.
• The Point of Emphasis system is not an acceptable substitute for individual defensive assignments.
• Passes lack crispness, often moving too slowly and floating in the air for too long.
• The court size feels too small when compared to the players' proportions and their movement speed.
• Fatigue levels are not shown when making on-the-fly substitutions.

It's a small list of faults, compared to most sports games, which shows how strong of a product NBA 2K14 could be, were it not for the game's questionable design decisions and poor online performance.
 

The Park

After two straight weeks of server downtime, The Park finally reopened on Jan. 5. The mode's random disconnections, horrendous input lag and unfriendly design still persist.

Actually completing a Park game remains difficult, as disconnections are prone to happen before, during and after matches. Of the few games that do finish without interruption, all of them contain lag so bad that the experience is like watching Nightcrawler hoop it up with Silver Samurai.

The lack of team uniforms and prevalence of the default green and grey attire make it extremely difficult to distinguish opponents from teammates. A simple shirts-versus-skins setup could easily fix these visibility issues, but it is unlikely that will ever happen, because then, Visual Concepts would not be able to sell "tops" to people for thousands of VC points.

The Park is further gimped by its reduced court dimensions, which are far too tiny for 10 players to fit into. Five-on-five games are a complete logjam, with players constantly bumping into each other, and no room for any sort of strategy.

Even during full-court 3-on-3 games, which seem to be the best overall option, the blacktop's decreased width makes it possible for defenders to sit in the lane, halfway between their man and the ball, effectively guarding two people at once.

With so many 99 overall players, finding a fair matchup can be difficult if you have not spent real money on virtual currency or grinded out multiple seasons in the offline My Player story. Despite completing the first year of My Player and using every locker code that's been released to improve my avatar's attributes, his 85 overall rating just isn't enough to stay competitive in most match-ups.

Since the mode is already smart enough to detect and display players' overall ratings on the initial loading screen, it's odd that the matchmaking was not programmed to fill each Park with similarly rated players. If it were designed that way, all the 90-rated superstars could face each other, and all the people who haven't devoted their life -- or credit card -- to The Park would no longer have to wait around searching for a fair game.

Lastly, it makes no sense that players cannot catch alley-oop passes in Park games unless they have first completed an alley-oop to themselves in an offline My Player game.

My Team

Another mode suffering from server instability, My Team, recently came back online Jan. 10 and has remained stable since then.

However, even when the mode is functioning as intended, My Team offers very little incentive to play when it so blatantly disrespects the player's time and his $60 game purchase.

Building a competitive team is a frustratingly slow and tedious process, unless you are willing to unload virtual currency or pull out a credit card.

Fans of EA Sports' Ultimate Team will immediately raise their eyebrows once they discover that NBA 2K14's best card packs, which range from 27,000 My Team points (silver pack) to 45,000 My Team points (gold pack), contain just one actual player.

Just how badly is Visual Concepts shortchanging consumers? A gold premium pack in NBA Live 14, for comparison, contains four to five players. A regular gold pack, which is often awarded just for completing game challenges, offers at least two to three players.

One player per My Team pack is simply unacceptable, especially considering the amount of time it takes to afford one. A skilled gamer can bank around 6,000 to 7,000 points from a single Domination event, which means it takes, at minimum, seven 40-minute games (4 and a half hours) just to add 1 potentially good player to your lineup.

I say "potentially good," because gold packs offer no guarantee of landing a worthwhile player. You could pull a slow, over-the-hill Kevin Garnett. Or worse, you could receive a second copy of a player you already own.

Since there is no marketplace where players can buy or sell individual cards from each other, NBA 2K14 forces gamers to immediately discard all duplicate items in exchange for a disproportionate amount of My Team points.

For example, a person lucky enough to see a second LeBron James card, arguably the best player in the game, would get back just 12,000 of the card's 45,000 cost.

While it is possible to earn bonus silver and gold players from Domination games, doing so requires a “three-star performance.” The requirements for achieving three stars are unclear and seemingly arbitrary. In 15 Domination games, I have earned just 5 three-star ratings. One of those three-star awards, shockingly, came from a game where I recorded just 61 points (in 6-minute quarters) and lost by 15. Conversely, in a game where I scored 75 points and won by 20, I somehow received the dreaded two-star rating. I say “dreaded,” because two stars will net you junk cards like logos, courts and uniforms instead of an actual player. Of course, even in the games where you inexplicably earn a three-star rating, you will still receive a lot more duplicate cards and Jason Maxiell-quality cards than players who can fulfill a role on a competitive team.

The overall quality of NBA 2K14's My Team can be summed up by its multiplayer experience, which primarily consists of users idling in the pause screen, waiting for their pause timer to run out. The reason? Players can earn more points by pause-forfeiting their way through games than they can earn by playing the mode normally.

Online Head to Head

Going against the Heat and Thunder repeatedly, with input delay that is worse than playing NBA Jam through an XBAND modem, is simply no fun.

Online Leagues

Two weekends ago, for the first time since NBA 2K14 launched, the Online League screen finally booted up for me without crashing back to the main menu. Though it is now possible to log in to the mode and start a league, many gamers are still unable to play their league games due to server errors.

Even if online league were working, the lack of gameplay sliders, difficulty options or even adjustable quarter lengths would still make this mode unappealing to most players.

Blacktop

These rooftop games of "21" would make for an entertaining local multiplayer mode, if the NBA's best players were not locked behind a VC paywall.
 

My Career

It's been just over a month since Operation Sports published an extensive analysis of the revamped My Player mode, and little has changed since our December deep dive.

Gameday accessories have been fixed, crashes and log-in issues have improved, though they continue for some users.

My Career is unquestionably the most innovative mode in NBA 2K14, and when working, it's arguably the most fun. Creating a virtual persona and guiding him through an NBA season produces many exciting moments, both on and off the court.

My GM

Unless your idea of a fun offline franchise experience involves a fantasy draft, there is currently little reason to play My GM. Overactive trade logic causes computer-controlled teams to swap players faster than Wilt Chamberlain swapped girlfriends.

Numerous bugs and glitches drag down the experience even further. As with My Career, dashboard crashes and log-in problems continue to affect some users. Save files will randomly get corrupted for no reason. Injured players can get permanently stuck on the disabled list, never to return.

Contract negations with upcoming free agents had been impossible to offer, until a recent workaround was discovered. Even then, many players will still hold out for outrageous sums, such as asking $16 million for a "6th man" role.

The fatal mistake that leaves My GM buried six feet deep is a glitch that prevents gamers from advancing to the next round of the playoffs. Imagine playing through all 82 games, reaching the culminating moment of a season, then being unable to capture a championship, because the schedule can't advance.

NBA 2K14's fourth title update, which was submitted on Jan. 16, claims that it will eliminate the playoff advance glitch and resolve all contract negotiation issues. But as NBA 2K14's third patch proved, title updates often break just as many, if not more, things than they fix.

Final Thoughts

In its current state, the experience NBA 2K14 provides is not worth a $60 purchase.

The online modes, though more stable now than at any time in the past two months, remain riddled with lag.

Of the three major offline experiences (My GM, My Career, My Team), only My Career offers any degree of fun.

Many, many things have to go horribly wrong for a product that looks as good and plays as well as NBA 2K14 to still leave a predominantly negative impression on gamers' minds.

The consumer loyalty and good will that Visual Concepts has gradually built, beginning with NBA 2K (Sega Dreamcast) and running all the way up to NBA 2K13 (PlayStation 3), has not been destroyed. But it has certainly been damaged.

NBA 2K15 will now require a much longer and significantly more detailed pre-release campaign than NBA 2K14, just to prove to sports gamers that Take-Two Interactive and Visual Concepts have not simply learned from, but also fixed, their mistakes.