NBA 2K20 has some bugs and glitches but is still a great game overall

Since the 1990s, the 2K franchise has been known for making the best basketball games with some of the greatest stories but their newest game, NBA 2K20, has a lot of glitches that make the game hard to play and it makes it very frustrating when trying to level up and the aggressive microtransactions makes it harder to enjoy the game.

NBA 2K20 was released on September 6, 2019, and it has added some new features like the well-received Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) game mode and the less well-received in-game purchases. The new additions is the accurate hairstyles, face scans, new players, new teams, new play styles, player strengths and weaknesses, new animations, and better AI. But they could have worked on other things such as fixing the game-breaking glitches first.

This is the first game in the series that lets you play in the WNBA as one of the 12 official women’s basketball teams. The WNBA has been struggling to reach the same viewership as the NBA but because the WNBA is finally in an NBA game this may help lead to greater interest.

MyPlayer is the NBA player that you control in the story mode, MyCareer. One of the most exciting parts about NBA 2K20 is the MyCareer story which was produced by legendary NBA star Lebron James. Your character is placed on a college basketball team trying to make it to the national championships and join the NBA. The acting is very serious and immersive and makes it feel like you’re actually living the story of stars like Lebron or Michael Jordan before they made it to the big league. Famous NBA players like Giannis Antetokounmpo or James Harden can come and practice with you and build a bond. The MyCareer story has improved a lot since last year’s 2K19, which didn’t have a very good backstory or feel immersive. 2K20 gives each character their own personality and specific traits that stay with them throughout the whole story. 

The biggest change to gameplay mechanics change is the foot planting, which now determines what your next move will be and how well you can dribble or break someone’s ankles, and is especially important in a basketball game. This is such a difficult thing to tweak because it’s easy to make players too slow with their movements and it’s very difficult to allow your character to move at their actual pace. The dribbling has improved a lot and now when you play, you will notice that the dribbling is very smooth and doesn’t feel slow.

It isn’t clear how 2K failed to catch all the bugs but it didn’t take long for the fanbase to alert other players and developers about the issues, leading #Fix2K20 to trend on Twitter. One of the major problems was not being able to pick up MyPoints which are vital to ranking up and improving your ratings in MyPark, a virtual basketball court to play pick up games. Some people would have the complete opposite problem and their skill points would be maxed out when they didn’t do anything. But for some reason, if you bought the virtual currency you could upgrade your character with no problems. These glitches are still trying to be fixed but so far no new news has been heard on these changes.

Probably the worst thing about 2K20 are the aggressive microtransactions which forces you to buy the in-game currency to upgrade your MyPlayer faster. The game developers made it harder to upgrade your MyPlayer so they made the shop the easiest way to level up and if you wanted to level up your player without money it would take a long time to barely upgrade anything. The story mode also literally tries to sell you a personalized water bottle, for real cash in the real world. These microtransactions it makes the game feel like a casino where you spin a slot machine and try to win good players like Kyrie Irving and Michael Jordan, which gives you an advantage over players who don’t have them. When playing with other people online the game is decided on who spent the most money because you get all the good players if you spend more money than your opponent. 2K hasn’t done anything to remove the microtransactions which makes it feel like a pay to win a game instead of a skill-based one. If you want to do anything like shoes or new moves, you need virtual currency. 

Overall, NBA 2K20 is a good game with improved features, better graphics, and updated rosters for every team. The game does have a lot of bugs and glitches that need fixing but those issues may still get ironed out in future updates. With the bugs and the aggressive use of microtransactions,  I would recommend people to not buy the game until the major issues are dealt with–but that may take months.

Image Credit: 2K Sports