Almost six hours into playing NBA 2K23 – and there’s a lot of content here, from climbing the WNBA ranks to building a monster squad in MyTeam – you realize you’re not just playing any other sports sim. Aside from its standard sports video game offerings, 2K Games and Visual Concepts have compiled an anthology of the NBA’s greatest players, eras, and moments. NBA 2K23 caters to both casual and hardcore basketball fans.
In this playable version of the 10-part TV special, the Jordan Challenge returns for the first time since 2K11. The game includes challenges recreating Michael Jordan’s greatest moments, including interviews with Dennis Rodman, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Phil Jackson.
MJ played for the North Carolina Tar Heels as a kid. He knocked off a young Patrick Ewing leading the Georgetown Hoyas, making the game-winning shot in the 1998 NBA Finals, which marked his final appearance as a Chicago Bull. Jordan himself achieved certain objectives in real life (like getting 63 points against the Boston Celtics in 1986) to earn three stars for each challenge.
Start an NBA franchise save in MyEra mode if reliving Jordan’s iconic scenes doesn’t suffice. Franchise mode now offers four eras to choose from – the Magic and Bird era, the Jordan era, the Kobe era, and the modern era.
Visual Concepts has meticulously detailed each generation of basketball. The retro graphics display the team, lineups, and score, as well as rules that weren’t in place at the time, and teams that weren’t even born yet (Seattle Supersonics). The uniforms are accurate to the period, and the action has a grainy quality, adding to the authenticity of the game.
In MyCity – where you live throughout your career – you will find stadiums, gyms, apparel shops, high-rise apartments, and tube stations. The city rarely feels alive. Instead of living, playing basketball, or doing leisure activities, it feels like a place where people just are. That may be expected for a sports sim rather than a sandbox.
If you acquire loan players early in the game and they disappear, MyTeam can be a grind – even so, there’s a glut of single player and multiplayer challenges to collect virtual currency (VC) and restock your squad. In all game modes, microtransactions have taken a huge step back. Despite their presence, especially when the grind gets so intense that one wonders if there is a way out – exchanging real money for VC is largely kept in the background and instead, 2K offer players in-game activities to boost their career stats and MyTeam squad.
Lag times are another frustration. Sometimes the loading screen would freeze, sometimes it would take two minutes to load. It would occasionally freeze – especially in MyTeam when restarting would result in a loss on your record and loan players’ contracts expiring. Despite its flaws, this sports simulation pays homage to basketball’s star-studded past.
