This year's edition of the best-selling basketball franchise welcomes rapper—and owner of the Brooklyn Nets— Jay-Z, as executive producer. I really like that Jay-Z is the executive producer for this year's game, because the songs are really good, and they motivate you to play the game. The songs get you pumped and into your game zone.
On the court, NBA 2K13 plays better than ever. Last season, in 2K12, I would always get frustrated with two things--inaccurate passing and fast break execution. In 2K13, that has been significantly improved. Lazy passes will still be intercepted, but a higher percentage of “safe” passes and outlets will make their way to their intended targets. You’ll finish on a lot more fast breaks too, as the speed of offensive players on the run feels much more balanced with that of trailing defenders. Now the flow of the game is really smooth, and that's important in order to play a good game. Also, the controls of the game are fairly simple, just like in last year's game. There is a slight change to the controls in 2K13, to make the gameplay easier and less frustrating. To perform the alley-oop, the most commonly used play on fastbreaks, you simply press the buttons X and square, and its convenient because they're right beside each other. That's the only change to the controls.
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| PS3 Controller |
A huge problem that has been dramatically improved this year is the online experience. Online games are running rather smoothly, compared to last year, where it would lag almost every thirty seconds. Im really glad how much effort the 2K Sports developers put into these modes. Let's take a look at the graphics. The developers lacked in this category a little bit. The graphics are still great, just like in 2K12, however, the players in the game don't look that realistic. In 2K12, they made the players look just like they do in real life.
Being a new game and all, I just expected better graphics.
Despite the graphics, NBA 2K13 is still really good and fun to play. There are various game modes to explore, such as, MyPlayer and MyCareer. MyPlayer and MyCareer are two game modes where you basically create your own NBA player, then you can play NBA games, win awards and money, and you can even style your own player! Those two game modes are my favourite. A celebrated addition this year is the inclusion of the 1992 Dream Team and the 2012 Team USA Olympic squad. While the addition of these teams is great, the Jordan Challenge and the NBA's Greatest Mode, the two most popular, and arguably the best game modes in NBA 2K, have been removed. To take its place, a new online-only MyTEAM mode has been introduced, which was bound to happen, considering the success EA has had with its famous Ultimate Team mode. You gather cards from packs to create, build, and lead your team to victories. You can also spend the coins you earn in-game to purchase players to enhance your team. Yes, MyTEAM has proven to be fun in limited playtime--but it’s too bad that the historical modes had to be sacrificed for its creation.
In my opinion, NBA 2K13 is in many ways a tremendous achievement. The game’s fundamentals are great, offering an on-court experience that is the best representation of real NBA basketball yet. You got to hand it to the developers for doing such a great job. I would recommend this game to everybody, you don't have to be a basketball lover to play this game, but I would especially recommend it to basketball fans, of course. I would rate it a solid 8/10. However, I wouldn't say it revolutionized NBA 2K gaming, because there are some down sides to the game. It's tough to improve a video game that has been so excellent over the past few years. In other words, it seems that after reaching the mountaintop, there really was no place to go but down--even just a little bit.
