NBA 2K franchise has been the highest in basketball gaming and in fact is the only competitor to itself. The lack of real competition takes almost nine years so it’s really surprising that it every year gets better and more innovative than the previous game. I’ve been playing 2K basketball games exactly as many years, since 2K flooded NBA Live by all segments, the undisputed ruler of basketball simulation from EA Sports workshops that ruled before 2K. Each year, including this one, the only question that arises is – is this year’s game better than last year?

As a great lover and connoisseur of the NBA 2K series, I must say that this game still manages year after year to evolve and offer a lot more in various segments, and gives us right to declare each new game better than its predecessor. Developers from 2K Sports try to pull you into the atmosphere of NBA madness for so many years that we’re only waiting for the next NBA title which will, because of the visual presentation, stop being just a game and will become so realistic that it’ll be able to mislead someone to think it’s real NBA match.

Attention to detail each year, each release is beyond common sense. New moves, new dribbling, a new presentation, new visuals and statistics… The thing that is important when we talk about these innovations is that you feel like playing a new game, and it’s not a small thing to mention that I’ve played more than 600 hours in the last two titles.

The biggest change in the core of the gameplay is dribbling which is now more mechanical. Before, you started dribbling, tilt the analog and automatically enter the realization of this maneuvering, which actually didn’t give you full control of the action, except that you could end the shot, laying in or dunk with sudden pass. This mechanical, as I call it, dribbling, is now fully your campaign. The so-called ankle breaker (joint breaker) is the term used when you send a player on one side by yanking, and you start dribbling the other way and thus create confusion in the attack by opening themselves and others to score. It functions on the way that you weigh the opponent by dribbling them and it is necessary to change they way of dribbling in the right moment.

The thing that is real and somehow in line with the reality is that once you manage something like this, it does not mean that you will be able to do it the next attack, so the game provides much more satisfaction because you know that your skill is in question, rather than pre-calculated and mapped animation. The shot is also slightly altered, but for the better. It cannot happen again that after performing the perfect shot the ball does not enter the ring, which was formerly not so rare case. In this way, you now have much better control of the player and its capabilities.

NBA 2K17 has set new standards in quality and as far as I’ve bored you with this statement, it is again the best basketball in the series and certainly enters the choice for the best game year, despite some glitches. Innovations in this year’s version were good enough to give you the green light to buy it, even if they have last year’s title. And some failures will almost certainly already be corrected with a patch that we expect soon..