 NBA 2K22 is actually good. I'm surprised a lot of people have been surprised and the devs are in a greens. They made a commitment to not make any drastic changes to shooting or dribbling. It's the first week of the game's launch and I've never seen the 2K community this positive. So I'm gonna catch you guys up on what's been going on if you haven't been in tune, but let's get into it. Before we do, yo, there's two camps of people that frustrate me. There's the people that's like, yo, bro, this game is ass that is never anything positive to say agent, you're a shell of 2K, you're paid contract worker. And then there's the other groups like agent, bro, all you do is hate on 2K, bro. If you hate the game so much while you're playing the game, just stop playing the game as if it's not worth trying to make it better. Let's just make sure that those two people like going to the ether, like we don't wanna deal with them in this video because there's pros and cons to 2K22, man. I've been playing the game, I know these ones. Okay, let's say full disclosure, I've been playing next gen. So everything I'm gonna talk about in current gen is off the empirical evidence and data that Davis has been telling me because he lives downstairs and Davis has been on current gen. I kinda wanna start with the positive because 2K is a lot of positive this year. Oh my, I didn't think I would ever say some shit like that. 2K is a lot of positive shit in the game. Okay, hey, first of all, the game plays significantly better. It's not boring no more. The dribblers love to dribble. The people that shoot love to shoot. Man, even the RPG on next gen, we're gonna get into it. It's actually surprisingly good. What the? Bro, I never thought I'd see today, man. Mike Wang said before the game launched that shooting and layups is gonna be like, everything's gonna be more predictable this year. And I was like, hopefully, I've never heard Mike Wang say that before. And I know that sounds boring to some people predictable, but that's great when it comes to video games. When you put up a shot, when you have an input in a video game, you wanna make sure that the result is predictable. The less RNG, the more you get rewarded for actually being good at the game, the more you get hooked on the process of trying to get better at the game. So when you play UNO, it don't really matter because it's so RNG. It's just fun with your friends that you don't really give a fuck. When you're playing a game that you actually want to win games on, like where it means something to win a game where you actually could improve because nobody improves in their UNO skill, the less RNG, the better, the more predictable, the better. And they delivered on that this year. I hope they don't touch shooting. I hope, actually, I can't speak on dunking just yet because I don't have a player that can dunk. But even the layups, like just the games I've played on the Micra and on the park so far is predictable. And I love that. Thank you for delivering on what you said you would, Beluba. The United of itself is a lot more fun this year because that's what was lacking last year was just fun. There's more like explosive dribble moves. There's a sound your jump shot meter makes when you hit a green light this year. There's animation that triggers. There's all of that. They just added small fun details to make the game more enjoyable to play. That being said, 2K did take out and I'm gonna get into that a little in the negatives but they took out a lot of animations. They took a lot of intros out. They took out a lot of like a jump shot celebrations across the board in the animation department. They went from like being 80 animations in a category to like six. And what I think 2K is about to do is drop some of them as like seasonal content. So what they did is remove them and then they're gonna give it back to you in seasonal content. But anyway, we'll get to that. So there's a bunch of different type of quests and side quests and city quests and city MVP quests in the next gen version of the game. Man, the penthouse is actually something fun to grind for. I've never thought I'd see the day where I'm grinding for a NBA 2K reward again but I'm doing it. Now I'm getting these MVP points to get the penthouse. So across the board you can go from level one to level 40 and you can get the go-kart. Once you get a million MVP points in the city you get the penthouse. And I don't know what's gonna go on in season two, three, four, five or whatever for 2K but so far the incentives for actually grinding this year I've put it. And so maybe my expectations were really low but I feel like 2K over delivered on the RPG part for those playing on the next gen version. Man, I'm hooked to this like music and fashion side career stuff. That on top of the fact that I'm in the mind career trying to get my MVP points so I'm trying to level up and reach level 10 in fashion, level 10 in music. Bro, I'm addicted to this. There's bad RPGs like the Division 2 where it felt like you were grinding and you were getting like new gear but it didn't really feel like it was an end goal. The penthouse kind of feels like the end goal in the RPG grind. We'll see how fun the game is to play once I reached penthouse status but even before that by the time I reached the penthouse my brother I'm logged in 80, 80, 90 hours into the game. That's a success of an RPG story. I mean, it's not without his flaws and we'll get to that but the RPG this year is surprisingly good. There's some boring and cringy dialogue from players like Kendrick Perkins or your PR director but for the most part good. And it's also like it's a funny middle ground because the next gen version of the game holds its own weight and anyone who has next gen consoles I think you should be playing the next gen version of the game but if you just wanted a simple you don't want to have to walk around too much NBA 2K gameplay experience not only does current gen feel exactly like next gen but on top of that you don't have to do all the walking around the quest you can just play the game if that's how you prefer to play it. Forever in 2K there's been two camps of people the people that just want to play the game simple it just give us a park I don't want to do all this extra stuff and then there's the people that want something new because they've been done the other stuff for so long they want to try something new who would have thought that 2K would be able to deliver on both of those this year because if you just want to play you go on current gen if you want RPG, next gen you go on next gen and I've been on next gen I have still yet to try current gen I will be on current gen abusing that too to see how I enjoy that but so far the people on current gen have been having fun and the people on next gen have been having fun too 2K has been surprisingly quick to fix issues as well there was an issue on the current gen version of the game where if you got an ankle breaker on somebody that person got kicked out the game and they would give you a loss for it so but 2K acknowledged the problem exists quick to fix, boom and the same thing with the dashboarding issue on the Xbox and the PlayStation on day one after day one, boom, it was fixed I don't know if there's been some kind of update to like PlayStation and Xbox but it seems like there's no like weak approval process anymore to get a patch or update that fixes pivotal problems in the game for better or for worse 2K has been fixing these problems very, very quickly so far so when you click the touchpad in the city it kind of feels like man it's still a big ass city the more you play in the city and the more you dive into the story the more you realize like there's not as many empty buildings as you think most of the buildings in the city serve some kind of purpose in the story and you end up going back there for like a radio station to promote some stuff in your music side career and I will be dropped I wanna try and reach level 10 on fashion level 10 on music and I wanna drop videos showing you all what that looks like for those who haven't been playing the game or doing the side quests because highly entertaining so far I've made a fucking diss track I have a buddy that I've been making music with I have my own DJ booth now where I can make beats so anyway those are two videos I will be dropping on the channel but the level design is better the one gripe I do have with the level design is once you actually get to the parks higher levels and lower levels and it's like you have to go around certain things and it's inconvenient to walk around in the actual park until you have the whole layout memorized you're like bumping into things and it's like it's a frustrating process but while I thought there was gonna be a lot of empty buildings and the city was gonna feel too big the city still does feel too big but there's less empty buildings than I thought and probably the biggest thing for me in the city because when I was playing this pre-launch I'm not gonna lie I was a little depressed playing I was like damn like it just feel like something's missing that something that was missing was thousands of people in the city not only is there like a thousand different AI no matter where you go they basically did what they did in 2K18 where like there's different servers so how power explained it was each park each affiliation has their own server so once you leave that affiliations parks you actually load seamlessly into a different server kind of like how it was in NBA 2K18 and it's not a perfect solution because if you're walking somewhere with your friend you'll vanish into a different server because you guys cross server lines now so it's not a perfect solution but the fact that there's now thousands of users in the city makes it actually feel alive and 2K please if you're listening to me I dare you to add proximity chat people will say NBA 2K22 is the greatest 2K of all time if you add proximity chat into the city I'm guaranteeing it right now but I don't think they're gonna do it but if they did do it it would blow minds because now it went from like a little depressing to like I'm excited to load into the city there's so many people everywhere you look and AI everywhere you look it feels like a city again I don't wanna say again cause last year it never did it just feels like a city for the first time they delivered on what they should have delivered on last year bro I'm not gonna lie I'm always gonna be like man I'll play it for content but I was not really excited for 2K22 they did some L promo I'm gonna be honest with you because man once I start to play but I can't stop playing y'all I'm gonna be on my career the second I get off this video my character's already in 92 overall and I'm trying to get him max badges I'm very close so let's get into some of the negatives because there are negatives as well let's not pretend like it's all roses it's NBA 2K at the end of the day it's a lot of like fucking careless errors for example in the RPG story on NextGen they give you like objectives which is cool but some of them are so vague that you have no clue how to complete them like right now I'm like 15, 16 my career is deep into completing an objective that is like basically I have to show out in my starter role to prove I deserve to be a starter and I'm getting 60 point games in five minute quarters I've gotten A plus teammate grades I've gotten double doubles like eight steals I'm doing whatever I can to show out I don't know how to show out and 2K never explains to me how to show out so I'm endlessly trying to try different things in the game to figure out what 2K meant by show out so I can complete the objectives it's a little frustrating because I spent over 100,000 VC trying to complete a fashion objective because 2K didn't want to clarify what they meant so that's such a dumb RPG error tell me what you want don't make me guess what it is because then it's like damn I'm spending all this time I spent over 100,000 VC on one objective I feel stupid now and they're not easy to understand either so that's my big gripe with so far on the RPG element of things the latency has I know y'all been waiting for the latency day one was beautiful bro it felt like I was playing on like 50, 60 millisecond ping but ever since day one bro it feels like I'm playing on Antarctica server sometimes I don't know how to I'm connected to these servers that's supposed to be NAEs and it feels like I'm playing on Mars but the delay sometimes jumps to what feels like 200 milliseconds it's frustrating this is one of my biggest issues with playing 2K online it's just variable latency one game is good the next game you're playing on Mars and it's like how are you supposed to time your jump shot if every game it feels a little different and 2K never gives us like the latency on the top right or top left so I don't know what it is you just have to guess based on how bad the game feels this is actually my biggest issue right now with the game and 2K has never fixed it in their history of me playing the game so I don't anticipate they will but hopefully you make some improvements 2K it shouldn't feel like I'm playing on Australian servers and I'm connected to my North American server right here it's down the street the server is down the fucking block do y'all ever hear me complain about latency to the day I die cause I don't think 2K will ever get it right 2K has been pushing this game more and more pay to win in slick ways for the first three days of the game's launch if you bought clothes there was clothing in the swag store that if you purchased it gave you double XP and each item of clothing was at minimum 5000 VC so you were spending 5000 VC to get two times XP for three days that's pay to win if I ever fucking seen it like if you're gonna ask people to go out and purchase some clothes make it free if it's for double XP but I'm telling y'all if you let them 2K will push it in that pay to win direction and they've been trying to Pro Am is unfortunately an afterthought which makes it like that's sad I walked into the prime arena and it's exact same thing as last time there's the ranked days where certain hours in the day there's ranked games you can run with your friends and then every other game you play is either unranked or private last year Prime was so forgotten about that it wasn't even worth trying for me well I tried it for like 12 games and then I gave up because it was clear it was so buggy and glitched out that the experience wasn't worth playing it sucks cause Prime could be the most fun game mode on 2K for so many people if 2K just gave it the effort and it seems like this year they didn't on the same note for some reason and this has devastated some of the group chats I'm in All Star team up is not in the game you know the game mode where you would load up and you'd play with different All Stars it's like Pro Am but with NBA players so you don't have to go through the process of grinding an entire player just to play with the really dope player you can just boot up All Star team up for some reason it is not in NBA 2K 22 and 2K has made it like a sport to take a feature out the game that people enjoy and then reintroduce it later as a brand new thing I'm not falling for it this year 2K took it out the game this year I don't know when it's gonna come back but as of right now the group chats I'm in that play All Star team up they're fuming probably the biggest gripe most people have with the city on Next Gen 2K 22 is the fact that you have to travel everywhere and you have to skateboard places and it takes time it's frustrating 2K does have a mission though once you talk to ATM in the city center he gives you a mission once you walk a long ass distance it was like 2600 meters you get spawn points in the city so it's not a perfect solution cause ideally you could just fast travel everywhere 2K I think that's your one big miss on Next Gen like me having to travel three minutes to go to a destination to get shoe incentives for my Puma deal so that I can make some VC in my career is dumb I wanna be able to fast travel there that should be an option for people who don't wanna waste the time I understand that maybe it gets in the way of 3V3 Pro-AM but 2K you have matchmaking for everything you have 1V1 matchmaking you have cages matchmaking you have 3V3 no squads what we need is a 3V3 squads matchmaking please 2K I'm not asking for a lot here and I get 3V3 Pro-AM has to serve a purpose but Pro-AM is not the same thing as park so if we understand that they're different let's not assume that the 3V3 Pro-AM experience is supplementary or like a good substitution for 3V3 squad park matchmaking also and you've probably seen some clips online the AI in Next Gen my career are demons the second you drop 30 points they turn into like Kauai Leonard they don't give you no open buckets they're throwing double teams on you and this year the AI is smarter than ever so they don't even fall for the same traps that they fell for in previous years bro it is hard to grind for shooting badge it's not hard but it's harder than it was in previous years to get shooting upgrades this year especially when you don't have shooting upgrades getting shooting upgrades is challenging cause they don't leave you open bro 2K ease it up I'm playing on pro difficulty why does everybody have to be Gary Payton 2.0 so the pros and the cons exist 2K22 is by no means a perfect game what I don't want people to do is be like oh agent you like 2K22 you can't criticize it all year long right cause you said you liked it so you don't like it anymore the game is not perfect I'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's perfect I'm just gonna sit here and tell you that me personally I'm enjoying next gen bro to the point where like if you asked me what game I wanna play right now my answer is 2K let me know how y'all feel man in that comment section down below if you wanna see me smile playing NBA 2K day one shit man look at that smile on my face in that thumbnail click it man watch the video I will be dropping some more game plays because for once NBA 2K is finally a fun game to play again fellas I'm also dropping my build and jump shot I've been shooting lights out with my two way player so all of that is coming I'm gonna catch you guys in the next one I'm out peace