 We're four months into the launch of NBA 2K20, which means most things at this point are final, which means it is a fantastic time to reflect on all the things that were said week one. One of my favorite past times, guys, is to go back to the launch of any game and see what IGN said about the game. It's funny, because they're almost always wrong. It's scary how wrong they can be. They're so consistently wrong, it's almost a skill. Hehehehe. I haven't seen the review, because obviously I don't trust them with any gaming information. But today, we're reviewing it and some other companies as well. And we're gonna see just how correct they truly were. Ain't no bias here, guys. There's no bias. I think, hopefully, I don't know. So the video dropped September 9th, which I believe was the exact day it released, which means they got the game early, a review copy. NBA 2K20 review by IGN pulled 400,000 views. Oh my God, it was very disliked. I wonder what they said. All right, let's watch. I'm very excited. On the court, NBA 2K20 is a dazzling experience that matches the energy and presentation of its... Why are we playing? Excuse me, sir. Are we playing on broadcast? My God. If you're trying to demonstrate that you at least have played a game of 2K in your lifetime, at least play on the 2K cam. I'm gonna try not to nitpick this video, but it's gonna be hard, guys. It's gonna be very hard. It matches the energy and presentation of its real-life counterpart. Enhanced footwork, dribbling, and player spacing help improve an already sturdy foundation. However, outside of the surprisingly well-written story mode, NBA 2K20 loses its focus off the court. It excels at recreating the pro game, but intrusive opportunities to purchase microtransactions exist in nearly every corner, and complex modes like My League are given far too little attention. Mm, okay. Am I agreeing with IGN right now? They hit the nail on the head. Also, you know, your mic quality is fantastic, dude. Give me your editing tutorial or something, dude. I want my audio to sound like yours. What mic do you use? NBA 2K20 upholds the recent franchise tradition of having top-notch presentation. Apart from the occasional lifeless gaze, players look just like their real-life selves and have the apparel to match. But they don't just look the part, either, as NBA 2K20 pulls out all the stops to make sure they feel like their real-world counterparts, too. Well, you know, before we started the game, the coach came in and told us that we knew what we had to do. A lot of this- Now, I'm gonna say this. I feel like all of that stuff he just mentioned, I wouldn't talk about it in a review. I feel like it's pointless. Yeah, it doesn't add to the immersion. Yeah, you're playing a basketball simulation game, sure. But it doesn't make the game any more enjoyable for me. I don't listen to any of that stuff. I skip past it all. I think we all do. So I feel like if you only have six minutes to give a review, man, why are we talking about things that don't matter right now? There's a lot of game modes to get to. This is amplified by the badge system, which attaches unique abilities to players beyond their raw stats. To take the Pogo Stick badge, for instance, this allows for players like Anthony Davis to quickly regroup after a blocked shot, making it easier to block several shots in a row. Defenders are better equipped to deal with speedy players, especially in transition, where tactics like walling up are employed against drive-heavy players like LeBron James. Learning went to pull up for a jumper and went to drive it to the basket provides a welcome new layer of frantic strategy. The transition is Russell Westbrook exploding. Hey, I'm impressed. Not gonna lie to you. First of all, they're playing on the 2K cam shot at you. The gameplay doesn't feel horrible. You ever watch a review and you're like, bro, why is he playing the game like that? Who does that? He's not good by any stretch because I saw him do a couple horrible takes. I don't even know if this is his gameplay. This might not be his gameplay. I'm not sure. Per and went to drive it to the basket provides a what the ball in your hands feels earned. The newly added dribbling animations help the game look different too. Watching Yannis barrel down the court with long strides is just as majestic as you would expect as you can see here. We're safe with that dunk. No question. Ah. A lot of the gameplay improvements are magnified in the new. Man, I feel like that's one of the negatives. How did you just mention that it's something neutral? The dribbling in this year's game, yes, is more realistic but it's way more boring. It seems like in the name of balance, they just stripped the game of all the fun that was dribbling. Now remember in 2K 15 and 16, you used to be able to do all kind of crazy. I'll be afraid to hop on the park in the stage just because you never know when you can run into a playmaker that knows what he's doing. There's no fear like that anymore. Nobody can strike fear in your heart. It's the same behind the back. You ain't talk about the behind the back just yet but I'm gonna give you some time, bro because there's minutes left to this review. But I'm glad we're talking about the point in the game that nobody ever plays. A lot of the gameplay improvements are magnified in the new WNBA mode. Spacing feels particularly good which leads to better off-ball movement and smoother play in general as you can see here. Brown, defended by Cambage. I like the ball movement. And Williams weighs it up a hand. Plus there is a novelty to getting to play with a whole new set of stars like Candace Parker or Brianna Stewart. Still many of the franchise's legacy issues persist and a few new ones crop up. The CPU rarely plays with the urgency it should ignoring easy two-for-one scenarios and milking the clock even when they are losing in the final moments of the game. What the hell are you, Kevin Durant? What the hell was that, Kevin? Kevin, what are you doing, man? Figure your shit out. God, you think you're Stephen Curry who played with the guy for a few years? Infrequently, the CPU will also dribble out of bounds for seemingly no reason at all. Perhaps worse of all, is a far too frequent double team that happens on any player who scores a handful of points in succession like this one. That's a nice throw-down. Ha ha ha ha. Gordon with no luck. Hey, hey, that's a good look, man. That's a good look. You know why they did the double team stuff? It's to stop people from badge grinding on my career. So did they make the doubles and triples and quadruples? Let's throw the whole squad. They might even throw the coach at you once you score two points. It's unbelievable. I'm glad he pointed that out. Unfortunately, NBA 2K's best mode, My League, received disgracefully few enhancements in 2K20. My League is so close to being feature complete that it would be easier to ignore the lack of improvement if some of the major problems, like the inability to sign in and trade players, were seen to. Instead, it's mostly ignored in favor of a casino like My Team, which causes a host of complicated problems for NBA 2K20. I rate this guy. Yo, I rate this guy. The casino like My Team. That's how you know they weren't paid by 2K, because they won't let them say something like that. Hey, first of all, we can't be running around, calling My League the best mode. People gonna think you're crazy, bro, relax. Second of all, you're right. It's scary how little improvements My League, My GM gets. You know 2K doesn't give a fuck about the game mode if it's the first thing they talk about in their cycle of news that they drop. I'm telling you right now, it's a tragedy that that game mode has been pretty much the same for the past few years. Because if you guys have ever played My League online with some friends, you know how much fun that could be. It just needs more and needs more attention. Which is why, on a side note, I'm a little pissed off sometimes thinking about how much attention My Career gets. It's like, yo, I don't play My Career, so I don't see the benefits of that. But it's like, My GM, My League got nothing, though. Right? We got the same perks on 2K20. Damn, it's like, yo, could we hire more people or just a little bit of focus in some of these directions? It seems clear that this mode's central goal is to extract as much money through purchasable microtransaction packs of player cards as it can. If you don't want to pay, you're forced to grind out various Monday-in-challenges to slowly earn them instead. To make matters worse, the entire mode is designed like a casino all the way up to a worthless roulette wheel. Its only redeeming quality is the satisfying card-pack ripping sound effects, which just serves to remind you of how preferable real-life card collecting is to the joylessness of my team. Woo! Shot! Better available game modes aren't universally a disappointment, however. The My Career story mode, when the lights are brightest, is the best entry for NBA 2K yet. This year features some witty writing and better-than-usual performances from a star-studded cast that includes Idris Elba, Rosario Dawson, and Thomas Middleditch. I know. I know, it ain't easy watching your brother fall like that, but hey, listen. Don't let moment of darkness take away from what y'all did tonight. God! That was inspiring. Hey, I do agree though that the story this year for My Career is pretty good. I mean, I don't like story modes, you know what I mean? Unless it's like The Last of Us, or Metal Gear Solid 4, or actually any story mode that's not as sports-titled as any decent. But for what it's worth, 2K20 was on the better end. Story navigates some interesting issues well, like the manipulation of student-athletes. Mix that with a few fun gameplay variants like participating in a series of mini-games for the NBA Draft Combine. That wasn't fun! Sets the new standard for story modes in sports video games. It's also worth noting that while microtransactions still plague My Career, progression is much faster than in prior years, and even lets you test out various builds before committing to your player archetype. I don't know, buddy. I mean, have you tried grinding badges? I feel like it's not faster, man. Also, the way you're upgrading your player is hurting my IQ. Online play is pretty good outside of the odd exclusion of being able to play as WNBA teams. Any latency was only noticeable due to the precision of the controls, but it never outweighs the fun and competitive play provides. Oh, he's capping! He just looked for you! What game did you play? It's not the same one as me! I could tell you that! Did he just up and say that the latency didn't impact the gameplay net? What game did they give you to play? I wanna play that one. 2K, how do I get that game? Give me that game. I wanna play that game. It's more enjoyable than ever to beat down online opponents. It's worth mentioning that while we only experience small inconveniences with online ourselves, other players are reporting widespread issues with random disconnections, crashes, and other online bugs. There we go. 2K says it's already working to address these issues, but they seem to be persisting as of the time of this review. That's a good call, reviewer! Good call up, that one! With the button! Here we go, the verdict, guys! Don't give him a 10! And the 2K continues its tradition of upping already-tremendous gameplay and emulating real-life basketball in ways that didn't seem possible just years ago. The inclusion of the WNBA may be this year's biggest step forward, especially because it does an excellent job showcasing the many gameplay improvements from last year. My career also continues to improve in small and noticeable ways, surpassing the standards set by previous iterations. Still, NBA 2K20 would have been better off by focusing on its complex modes, like My League, and cleaning up my team to be less dependent on microtransactions. How about parts? In spite of that, NBA 2K20 remains the best at what it does. It might just be time to ask for better. I know, it's definitely time. What are you talking about right now, man? You were doing so good a moment ago. It's obviously time to ask for better. What the f*** is wrong with you? Hey, you didn't mention that they had the same part back-to-back years. You didn't do that, why didn't you do that? In fact, I didn't see no playground gameplay. Did you even include that in this review? I don't think you could have because you played this before the game long. So the review of NBA 2K20 didn't include the most popular mode. Why did you do that, IGN? Because on the modes that he did cover, I feel like he hit the parts he needed to hit, man. But why would you release a review if you know that you didn't play the whole game yet? Or the most important part? Of course you think my league is the best part of the game. You haven't played Playground. Come on, man. Do your due diligence, IGN. I'm surprised they gave it a 7.8. Usually like these companies, they must be getting paid or something because I don't know why they'd be giving them 9s and 9.5s every year. But for some reason, 7.8. As a professional and authenticated raider here on the internet, I'm gonna say that's not a bad rating. Now, I will say this, IGN. Nobody gave you the authority to rate anything online, right? So don't. I wouldn't say 7.8. I'd say like 6.8 if you asked me. So I don't know if you guys know how this usually works. Like before the game launches, like 2K will have a couple launch events. And so they'll invite a whole bunch of YouTubers but mainly it's like journalists in the industry. A whole bunch of industry people will go there, pick up their little controllers, play the game on broadcast, and then they'll have a whole bunch of opinions and they'll come back and then they'll write articles like this from Game Informer. And so you read these articles trying to get a good idea of how amazing or horrible the game is. And sometimes it just doesn't give you a good impression of the overall picture. I mean, IGN's review didn't even include the most popular mode. I don't know why they would do that. At launch, the game has had problems such as my career player is not being awarded earned progress and my team's single player triple threat challenge is not being accessible. These kinds of hiccups are usual for visual concepts and partly prove that the NBA 2K series as strong as it is in some areas needs to keep working. And so based on that description, that conclusion, you might think, ah, no, they're probably gonna rate it like something, like maybe like a six or a seven. 8.5! Have you ever rated something that you described as needs to keep working as an 8.5? Like you hand in a paper and your teacher was like, I don't know, man, you need to keep working on this. I'm giving you a 85%, congratulations. It's not adding up to me, but that's just because I have logic. The gameplay heart of the series is well-intact, although some choices to develop for visual concepts makes parts of the modes aren't the best. Keep delivering on the gameplay front and the overall strength of its league structure while inadvertently reinforcing how my part needs significant changes. That's true. I agree with you on that for show. Hey, shout out to you, Matthew. Didn't read your whole article because I don't like to read, but you seem like you know what you're talking about. Okay, now Bleach reports. I mean, it kind of goes like, there are dozens and dozens of dozens of people that go to these events and they'll play the game and then 2K will send these companies all of these like review copies so that they can play it early so that when the game drops, they can come out with their review. But that's kind of backwards because if you drop your review before the game releases, then you didn't play park. Unless maybe they had like a private server, but I don't even think 2K has the technology to do that without f**king up. The addition of the WNBA is the exclamation point as far as new additions goes. So of all the things that were added, because it was plenty of fantastic things 2K added, like I feel like the pie chart had a potential to be amazing, but it ended up being more limiting than it was amazing, whatever. I think the badge system this year works better than it did in previous years. Although I don't like how they did like quick draw. That shouldn't be a badge. So like, yeah, it needs fine tuning, but there's plenty of fantastic features we can point at. Are we sure that WNBA is the best one? Now maybe if you had some sort of micro integration or like maybe then we could begin talking about something like that. But you just play on the play now with them. And you can't even play WNBA versus NBA, which I think would have been hilarious. You could only do WNBA versus WNBA. As an entry point for new players is simply the latest addition for returning players, 2K20 is an expected good time with enough upgrades to warrant a look. And they didn't rate it, which I like. I like that they didn't rate it. They know their role. They don't have that authority. So usually when 2K comes out, a lot of people will ask me like, yo, agent, what do you think about the game? And I'll reserve judgment because if I'm uploading my take on September 7th or September 9th, then I don't really know what I'm talking about. I had to play the game. I have to grind my players. I have to try out the different modes. And then you get a good sense of how that game is feeling. On top of that, we all know that 2K never comes out perfect, polished. So you usually had to wait a couple months just to see which game breaking bugs are going to be patched. For example, if you practice dribbling in the prelude in the beta, the dribbling in the final product when the game released was completely different. You wouldn't have known that if you just played the earlier version of the game that wasn't the retail version. So let me give you my review here. 2K20 was gonna be a bad game. Which sounds like, does that much of a review? I don't know. 2K19 was really good. And I think for the first time in my history being a part of this community, 2K19 was the first year where we all recognized while it was going on that it was going to be a top 2K. There was meta issues. There was like seven foot stretch big shooting over shot contest issues for sure. But it was fun. And it was different. And a lot of people enjoyed it even with his flaws. When 2K20 came out, I was unsure about the dribbling. Every dribble had I talked to wasn't feeling it at all. Yeah, sure. If you are a schizo or one of the top 0.001% dribblers, you can figure out a way to make creative dribbles and make the game fun for you. But for most average or good players, they're never even gonna come across those dribble moves. They're just gonna keep doing the same abusive behind the back over and over again. They've repeated the same neighborhood after lying about that. So there's that. Ronnie just capped about so many things. The expectations were so high off of good 2K19 that we just wanted the world. We wanted to close out the PS4 in good fashion. And I don't think they did that. And I like for them to prove me wrong and drop some updates that drastically changes the way the game plays or makes it more fun for sake. Isn't that the point of playing games? But yeah, I'd get a game like a 6.8 if you asked me. And that's without even talking about the microtransactions. Cause all of these companies for what it's worth, they all mentioned that that's something that's been plaguing the game. It's so common at this point that they just kind of prefaced the video like, guys, we know there's microtransactions, but let's just ignore that because we can talk about that and give it a two out of 10 every year. I came into this video thinking all of these guys are gonna miss the mark. I mean, aside from a couple mishaps here and there, they kind of hit the nail on the head. Yeah, 2K20 is not perfect. I wouldn't even say it's great. It's high. But the part that sucks about it is they just came after a really good 2K19. So I can't help but think we just whiffed the whole year. And that's been mentioned in all these reviews. I'm actually surprised. I'm not gonna lie. Cause I've done videos like this in the past where I look at some of these reviews and you know, they're always very, very wrong. Always. I'm still not gonna go to IGN for my reviews. Hey, if you guys enjoyed the video, drop a like, man, subscribe to the channel. Hey, this video's on the screen. What the hell? You can click on anyone and then whenever you want to. I'm gonna head out though cause I need to get my 10,000 steps today on this weight loss grind.