Review: In the ten years since my friends and I would routinely compete for bragging rights, NBA 2K has been fine tuned on the court.
But much like this year's MyPlayer hero, it's distractions off the court that let it down.
Last year's 2K21 got a free pass for delivering a substantial graphical upgrade on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
2K22's gameplay improvements are far more subtle. The most significant is how your player's exhaustion is now directly linked to their ability to shoot.
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If you love to hold down that right trigger and sprint everywhere, the sweet spot for hitting your shot will be substantially reduced making typical charges to the hoop in a flurry of fast breaks harder and more detrimental to pull off.
Ultimately, it slows the game down and forces you to play team basketball.
Pick-and-rolls are the easiest way to get an open shot and the game makes a concerted effort to teach you how to call one early on.
All the modes you'd expect return in NBA 2K22.
Purists can still play online or off using as every current NBA or WNBA team, plus a plethora of classic teams. But MyCareer and MyTeam continue to be the focal point.
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Both modes require hours, upon hours of dedication to reap any real reward.
The novelty of designing and taking your player from college to big leagues has worn off in MyCareer.
That's saved to a degree in 2K22 by a more modernised story and better acting, but is ultimately a slow and frequently boring grind that demands you play full-length quarters if you're to have the best shot of making more baskets and plays to lift your rating.
Fans will likely sink the most time into MyTeam.
The concept of building your own roster of legends and competing online has been around since NBA 2K13, but barriers to that simple fun have only gotten worse for the sole purpose of forcing players to spend more money.
Navigating the menu alone is so ridiculously convoluted that horribly designed fluro green arrows and text pop-up on screen to point things out to you when you first arrive and don't get me started on opening packs of player cards.
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Like old school Pokemon cards, you build your roster by opening packs of player cards, trading those cards with others online or straight up buying cards.
The grind is extreme and for whatever reason you can't open all the packs you've earned at once.
Doing this seven times to open packs of three cards, and then being forced to select two face down cards at random to add to your line-up, all before before an online match, was incredibly tedious.
You know a menu is poorly designed when you often end up on a screen with nothing on it except a button that says 'next.'
There's no other option, just take me to the next screen automatically.
NBA 2K, like Fortnite and Rocket League, shifted to the idea of "seasons" a long time ago; a series of timed challenges and themes that fuel progress and the chance to unlock new players, in-game currency and cosmetic items.
In reality, the rewards are so minor that it would take the average player upwards of 10, 20 or even 30 hours to afford to buy a few favourite players you'd want in your starting five.
The game is geared towards those willing to "pay-to-win," which would be fine if the game was free, but NBA 2K22 still demands an $89 price of admission on next-gen consoles and $149 for the 75th anniversary edition.
What do you get for that extra $60? Guaranteed "sapphire" cards of Kevin Durant, Dirk Nowitski and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a bunch more packs to open, more skill points to spend on your custom player, exclusive clothes for them to wear and 100K VC (NBA 2K's in-game currency). For the record, $75K VC costs about $30.
Keep in mind, NBA 2K already bombards the player with ads mid game under the guise of its real world accurate presentation.
NBA 2K is not the only game guilty of this. FIFA and other sports games do the same.
Question is, where is that line? These games are expensive to make and those that do deserve to be paid handsomely for our entertainment, but at what point does that emphasis on gambling – in the form of paying for randomised player packs – take over and hurt the fun?
Arguably, that line is already being crossed.
