 NBA 2K has had a storied history with a lot of ups and downs, some fantastic products and some miserable products. Ladies and gentlemen, today we're asking one question. Which 2K was the greatest of all time? And we're hunting for answers. Now I've been playing NBA 2K for over a decade. And when the conversations usually brought up, three games come to mind. NBA 2K 11, NBA 2K 16 and NBA 2K 19. For all intents and purposes, they were the best overall 2K products. Best 2K of all time, once again, it's no comparison NBA 2K 16. Best simulation experience ever created for any gaming sports. NBA 2K 16 had something I think most sports games struggle with. A skill gap. And that game, the dribbling, the defense all took skill to do. Someone who plays 10 hours a day and who has mastered their craft of dribbling is going to absolutely cook and 21-0 someone who does not play at all. 2K has had some incredible video games in the last decade. A joy to play deep into the night till 5 a.m. with your guys. They've also had some abominations they called AAA video games. Just games that shouldn't have released that were wildly unfinished or that came with big ideas and poor execution. But it really depends who you ask. Because for reasons I'm going to describe here in this video, everyone has a different answer. Regardless of who you ask though, 2K 11, 16 and 19 are always top contenders. So let's talk about them. Why those games were so great. What 2K did to fall off and how they can come back. I would say the turn for the words for 2K would have to be when they were just adding way too many things into the game without really understanding what the game really needed and its fundamentals and its core values. When they just started adding all this extra stuff to park when they were adding all this extra things to like my team when it didn't actually address some of the core issues and problems of my team. All the extra things without addressing the core problems is where they went wrong. They thought that a lot of the problems that they had could just be masked over with these other things that they added to the game that was completely unnecessary. But there's a few different variables that change people's answer. And the first one is what game modes you play. If you're a huge program head, you might like 2K 17. If you're a huge park head, you might like 2K 17. My GM, not so much. The greatest 2K of all time, still 2K 16. Man, the gameplay, the dribbling, the build system, the balance, the actual good affiliations, solid creativity to have like a water park, amusement park, and like a rivet factory. The soundtrack! Oh my, that's the only 2K I've actually played the soundtrack on consistently. It also really depends what your first 2K was. If you play 2K 16, you think it's the greatest but you never played 2K 11, you're missing context. And two, you tend to have fond memories of your first 2K. Even though 2K 10 was the first one I played seriously, I have fond memories. I mean, my memories will leave me to believe it was better than 11, even though we know that to not be the case. It also really depends how many 2Ks you've played. There's a term used to describe this called franchise fatigue. The more you play a certain franchise, the more you get tired of it. So even if they're putting out the same level of output or innovation, you're not as surprised by it anymore. It's not as new to you as the first one you've ever played. And so the more you play, the likelihood that franchise fatigue sets on you significantly higher. 2K would have to go back to the basics. If 2K wants to come back to peak level of relevancy, if they want to come back to that fun game that we all fell in love with playing, they're going to have to go back to the basics and fix a lot of core mechanics, bring back this simplistic gameplay that made a lot of people fall in love with it. And then from there, when you are able to establish that, then you can continue to add on, you know, the sprinkles, but you have to go back to bringing back what actually makes the game matter, which I believe is gameplay. It also really depends if you equalize for expectation. In NBA 2K10, when they introduced the micro, everybody was excited with the new story mode. Now we're used to it. 2K21 next-gen, that's to be expected. In NBA 2K14, the same happened. They introduced a park. Now if we don't get new, parks is something to be disappointed about. So if you don't equalize for expectations, NBA 2K11 is not going to be the greatest of all time to you. Well, it's true. The series has come a long way since NBA 2K11. There's a lot more depth now. There's a lot more to the game between my team and the new and improved program that they used to call the crew. They got play now online. They got a park mode. They got a 3V3 program and the list continues to go on and on. But those who played NBA 2K11 back in the day, remember, it was very innovative and at the time it had depth. I think what makes a good 2K game is fun. That's, you know, we play games that fun. A skills gap. I think it's frustrating for a game that, you know, you want to play a lot to not have a skills gap because then you kind of feel like you're playing for no reason. And then a motivation to play. Why do I want to keep getting on this game? Am I leveling up? Am I going to lock something cool at the end? I think those three things are important when it comes to making a good 2K. And the last variable is how long has been since that 2K release? For whatever reason, people tend to hate the current one. Oh, but they love it. It went three years past. And so for whatever reason, games like NBA 2K16 were disliked at the time. Now they're loved. They're well known as one of the, if not, the greatest 2K of all time. But today here in this video, we're going to get down to the bottom of it. My favorite 2K of all time is 2K18. No, it's not 2K16. I'm just kidding. I thought it was well polished. A lot of things you can do in the game. And a lot of innovation too. It just felt really cohesive. The best 2K I've ever played is probably still 2K16. It's still probably 2K16. Everything that they provided in that game. I loved it. So I would still say 2K16 is the best one I've ever played. I feel like there was a lot more that was not only in the game, but it was way more polished. My team felt very, very, very well-rounded. And that was a game mode that you played practically all year long. Park was also really fun. It felt like very easy to play, very responsive. It didn't feel like I was being cheated out or anything like that. I didn't know yet. Pro-am. I put together weighted rankings with four different criteria to determine whether 2K11, 16, or 19 was the greatest 2K of all time. The four criteria include how fun the game was to play, the overall experience of playing the game, the gameplay, and how much depth the game had. First up is experience. And that's the servers. And when you join your friend on your phone, did you join it on the first time? Small quality of life stuff that make the game fun to play. Next, gameplay. Gameplay is vital. I mean, just ask NBA Live what it looks like to drop a game over and over again with bad gameplay. It's not fun, which leads us to the next one. Fun. Gameplay can be great. But is it an enjoyable experience and worth playing? And last but not least, depth. Some NBA 2K games just have more depth than others and that really just comes down to replayability. How can they come back? Yeah. It's actually quite simple. They can't. I'm so serious too. I'll catch you later. And regardless of which NBA 2K was the greatest 2K of all time, the point remains. NBA 2K21 next gen was just not it. It lacked on a lot of the criteria, man. It wasn't really much fun to play. The experience was absolutely atrocious. Gameplay felt bare bones and lackluster. And most importantly, didn't have much depth. The replayability is by far, in my opinion, the best aspect to what can make a really, really good 2K game. Because if you fall out of love or you fall to this lull of playing 2K over and over and over again, it doesn't feel new to you or it doesn't feel like something you want to come back to. So if it's not replayable when they do those small little tweaks, then they can just really ruin the game. Because at that point, I can just go back to the previous iteration. So replayability to me is what makes a 2K game really great. There's an interesting paradox I want to bring to your attention. For a video series I was shooting, I had an opportunity to play the entire NBA baller series. Played the first one. Was stunned at how fun the arcadey basketball experience can be. Played the second one. Even better. Gameplay was smooth, silky, enjoyable, fast paced. Then I played the third. They had some big ideas, but the execution was poor. And the third one was a flop, ladies and gentlemen. NBA Street 1 and 2. Great time. Three. Not so much. As though developers try and do a little bit too much. And it ends up bogging the game down with clunky mechanics that make the game unfun to play. So NBA 2K, I need you to start removing animations when there's no reason not to. I need you to start adding in animations that make the game fun and fast. When you slow the game down, you make it less fun to play. And beyond all of that, stop introducing new technology to the game that doesn't actually improve it. There's so much about random physics improvements to the footwork in the game. Only to find out that when you actually play it online, none of that really applies. The gameplay still feels sluggish. Everybody's experience on the game is different. And depending on who you ask, a game like NBA 2K17 can rank as one of the best or worst 2Ks of all time. Again, the variables do play a very big role. To illustrate this, I decided to ask some content creators in Hank the Tank, Joe Knows, and Troy Dan to put together their tier list of the last decade of 2Ks to see which one they thought was the best. And this is what it looks like. On the left, we got Hank the Tank. In the middle, we got Joe Knows. And on the right hand side, we got Troy Dan's list. And you can tell there's big differences in the three. I mean, Hank has 2K15, 16, and 17 at the top because he primarily plays park. Troy Dan oddly has NBA 2K21 at the goat tier. I actually couldn't tell if he was trolling when he told me that. I wasn't sure. It could almost be pretty challenging, you'd argue, to just find some consistencies in these tier graphs. And I was curious. I brought the question to YouTube and asked you guys in the form of a community poll, and y'all had this to say, the best 2K of all time and with 177,000 votes, which is crazy, by the way, NBA 2K16 won in a pretty decent landslide. At 55%, 2K11 ranking in at 6%, 19 at 11%, other at 20%, and I don't know at 7%. King Superior put up a good point. He said, most people on this list have never even played 11. That's why it doesn't have a lot of votes. And again, depending on whether 2K19 or 11 or 16 was the first 2K you played, the 10th 2K you played, depending on which game modes you played, because of course, those vary. And all the other variables all played a role in how 2K16 won this in absolute landslide. I need you to make sure that quality of life improvement, the small stuff that make the overall experience fun are adjusted. I need you to make sure that games matter and there's ranked modes and good leaderboard systems so that you can grind and you have an incentive to get better and play the game and level up in the leaderboards. And more importantly, I need better rewards. When I level up my player after a very long time of grinding a mindlessly boring experience, I need to be rewarded with something. Make the experience of grinding fun, make the rewards enjoyable to get and make the games mean something. That's how you make a good basketball product. I decided to put together a weighted score so gameplay and fun get three times multipliers and depth and experience get two times multipliers. So once you input in all of the numbers, you get the weighted score, NBA 2K11 gets a score of 85. That's really good. NBA 2K19 gets a score of 82. That's solid. But what I think a lot of people are starting to realize as the years go on and was made very apparent even in this weighted scale here is that NBA 2K16 is the greatest 2K of all time with a grand score of 98. It didn't matter whether you played my team or my GM or it could be Pro-Am or Park. You had fun memories of the game. You had a lot of fun. The gameplay was there and the overall experience just felt whole. For a long time, it was kind of just like a question mark in my head, but to actually have an answer, it feels odd. And so the objective is pretty simple. If 2K can make the next 2K look a lot more like NBA 2K16, we'd be in a much better place.