I gave 2K15 a good review and that was after a couple Patches that made the game usable. 2K16 came around and it's the same engine, basically the same game but with a ton more flaws and issues and i don't know how that is even possible. I mean in 2K15 for example the Lakers had their real arena light, that means, all the lights on court while the crowd area is darkend. In 2K16 it's the same bright lit arena like everywhere.
But that's just one of the more superficial flaws this game has.
So far i encountered:
- During Games the commentators stop working, that was a problem in 2K15 but is even worse here now with the commentators stop all the time, in every match be it a mycareer match, a online match, myteam match, all the time
- Sound effects and Music also stop, you play one match in Mypark with the Music, all sound effects and the next match you only have the sound effects of Park itself, like the Bird and Sea sounds on the Park or the Steel mill sounds on the Rough Riders Park but you won't hear the players, the ball or anything else.
Now of course one could argue that sound is just one thing but there are many other problems
- Invisible players, that happens everywhere be it the park or an offline game, sometimes player get invisible but they still play, making points and everything
- You get fouled out (6 fouls) but you can still play
- Players shoot at the wrong hoop (happens with the AI)
- AI players don't know how to behave and resemble more a bunch of scared chickens
There are more issues all around, i have a screenshot of the Store where rings are displayed as pants, that's not fixed one month later.
- Random crashes, unable to invite friends, connection problems, disconnections in the MyPark, connection errors (including crash to desktop) on MyCourt when you invite friends do exist. 2K's servers are notoriously bad and have been bad for the past few years over console generations and now on the PC. It's baffling they don't fix their crap which leads me to the next point:
- Microtransactions. With 2K15 2K introduced VC to the game, you earn VC by playing matches, be it online, mycareer, mypark or whatever which you can invest in shoes, jerseys, shorts or use on the MyTeam mode as with always, microtransactions on a game that costs 50€ (at least, the MJ edition was 69,99€) is questionable, while you can earn them, you can buy them with real money and 2K this year made sure you can't get enough VC without paying for them. MyTeam has Card Packs that cost 7.500 VC, there are shoes up to 15.000 VC, Jerseys up to 5.000 VC and regardless if you unlock shoe contracts or not, the shoes you design yourself in the main menu outside the career cost you 7.500 VC, regardles of a shoe contract and if you want to proudly display the jersey of your team you play in career in the online park you need to get to a certain park reputation and on top of it, the jersey is another 5.000 VC. Last year those Team Jerseys in the Park were free, now even for that 2K wants your money.
The positive things, are the new things: Team relocation in MyGM and MyLeague are fun and in MyTeam you can use the same features about getting your own Logo (better make sure to not use any trademarked stuff becuase apparently even using and old Team logo that is not available can get you banned and the game only supplies you with the regular 30 NBA Team Logos, despite having classic logos and jerseys available in MyTeam but you're not allowed to use them in MyGM/MyLeague, so you can upload them yourself but you risk getting banned because it is actually a breach of their TOS)
Speaking of MyTeam, it's a grind through hundreds of the same cards and the same old challenges, in fact, it was a lot more fun last year where you could chose between Current and Classic Team Packs, now you only have 3 current packs and at the moment a Rookie Card Pack that can net you anything from a rookie to a silver to an amethyst card pack but most of the time you get the same guys over and over, i got 3 times the same blake griffin rookie of the year card. It's like the game is trolling you and just wants you to waste your MT Points or VC on crap.
Talking about that i want to mention more bugs people had:
- No Keyboard support, while i think playing a sports game on Keyboard (i haven't done that since FIFA 96 personally) is kinda dumb, i think a PC game should support the Keyboard. NBA 2K16 doesn't really, you can't configure keys and the pre-made layout is apparently made for aliens with 3 arms and several more fingers
- In MyCareer you might receive MyTeam Cards through connections...at least that's the theory. I unlocked a few, never got the cards
- Same with the rival day on MyPark, the second week me and some friends helped the Sunset Beach securing a victory and despite constant "Claim your reward on the kiosk" messages, we never got the promised VC and reduction of Boosts.
And now we come to the big hype this year: Livin' da Dream - A Spike Lee Joint
The premise is actually fun: You start in High School, play College and then go to the NBA. Certainly better than the "Not getting drafted story from last year" but:
You can't really customize your player, you are from Harlem, your nickname is Frequency Vibrations, shortened to Freq and you're basically forced to create a black player because otherwise it's absurd to have black parents and a black twin sister.
So you start in High School which consists of 3 games followed by College (you can select 1 of 9 colleges but it makes no real change at all) which lasts for 4 Games and after than you're in the NBA, after you got drafted your rookie season consists of 8 games (and 1 playoff match, if you're lucky) while the rest is simulated. The game actually acts like you should have a choice, like teasing a decision about wether you do a second college year or go straight to the NBA or later "state your oppinion about your shoes" which was mistaken by many to be a shoe deal which it isn't, it's just cutscenes you have no influences whatsoever and most of those scenes drag on for too long (some are over 10 minutes) and you sit there and wonder "is this a badly written movie or am i still playing a game?" only to realize "i'm stuck in a badly written story full of cliche, annoying (and sometimes racist) characters and plot holes (like your player constantly switching between a 3 time and a 4 time all-american) in a game full of bugs that make me play matches for the sake of seeing more stupid soap opera like cutscenes"
Once your after the rookie season you start MyCareer but it's still not your Career as mentioned above, you can select a "secondary nickname" but the PA and the Announcers as well as the Pre- and Post-Game Show still call you Freq all the time. It's highly annoying.
I could go on and on with the flaws, how 2KTV makes the game crash at random times in the main menu, the performance is abysmal because it's a very badly optimized game, how disconnections, crashes, glitches and limitations hinder everything and 2K doesn't care and of course how the online mode is filled with cheater on the park or the obnoxious ce-quitters in myteam and of course that even the music while being a great diverse soundtrack with various styles and some truly great songs is censored to the point where songs consist of mostly audio drop outss, the worst example being NAS - Made you Look which is so horribly butchered that the finaly 10 seconds only consist of the word spit because everything else is erased because it contains "filthy words".
So all in all, while the basis of the game is still a good basketball game, it has too many bugs, glitches, flaws, cheaters with 2K apprently only caring about saving their precious microtransactions and nothing else. So all i can say, is: Don't buy the game and don't support 2K because they simply don't care.