NBA 2K17: Moving Up On Top

Man, oh man, when I first saw this Kobe Bryant Legend Edition cover, I was so excited for 2K17. I couldn't wait for it to come out. After playing 2K16 and seeing how good that game was, it became dry off very quickly when there were issues I had seen that I wish 2K could have at least addressed. But Unfortunately, it was the time to be focused on another game. After seeing the Kobe Players vs Haters trailer, I was ready to get 2K17. I felt that this game had the potential to be the best 2K of all-time. And so, this is where I start continuing to get NBA 2K games every year because there's a 50-50 chance, a 50-50 chance that the NBA 2K games coming out every year might not meet its expectations. And NBA 2K17 pretty much did that, but of course there are some issues in this game that I will address later on. I'm Tavon and let's get this story started!

First things first, we always start off with the main menu. I like it. It's pretty good. If you think about it, when exploring the game, it kinda sucks not to see the championship trophy a lot behind the Myleague HUD. I just thought of that now. I've never thought of this before, but I realized that when I haven't played this game in a while.

The Gameplay is so spectacular! When I was hyped for this game, I knew there were going to be some improvements to the gameplay that year. The most important gameplay improvement of this game was shooting. It was awesome. Instead of timing your shot to the middle of the meter, you instead fill up the meter to make shots. This was amazing and really made me like this game a lot more than 2K16 because you can easily make more shots, whether they're easy or tough, and makes the game more fun with this major improvement. To make things more improved, you can time layups now as layups now have a shot meter. Now you can easily make more layups in your favor. The alley-oops are improved, as 2K fixed the alley oop issue last year by using the left stick to select the receiver after lobbing the ball. Now, I have made more alley oops than 2K16 when I first got this game. It's still sloppy, but good for 2K to add a new control. The Graphics are great. I noticed that players are more realistic than ever before after 2K16. The body types have improved on certain players, too, so that's a plus.

MyLeague deserves a lot of love in this game. After doing well in 2K16, 2K finally stepped up to the plate in MyLeague on NBA 2K17.

The major feature in MyLeague is League Expansion. This feature was the main reason why I wanted this game. You can start your MyLeague the normal way, of course, with the current 30 NBA teams. But these two options make MyLeague whole to the core. You can either add up to 6 pre-made or custom Expansion teams or you can make a custom League up to 36 Teams, 6 more from all the previous 2Ks. This feature is so awesome. It made me want to do a Best NBA Real-Life MyLeague Ever kind of MyLeague, even tho I didn't, because even tho I wanted to play a full season of MyLeague, there were still issues that kept me from doing just that. But nonetheless, MyLeague has gotten better.

I loved this MyCareer. This may also go down as one of the best MyCareers in NBA 2K. The efforts that 2K put in to this MyCareer was simply great. Archetypes were introduced in this game, and it was amazing to have them in the game. The story was amazing. Even tho I miss playing in high school, the story took it on a whole nother level. You start off playing in college, working your way up to the draft. Perhaps one of the best parts of the beginning of Mycareer is after you have completed college, you get a call from Coach K to play for Team USA, which is amazing. After that, you get drafted of course. Once you're in the league, the best part about the first season of MyCareer is that you can literally play the whole season, unlike 2K16, which was okay, but I would've loved to play my entire first season without skipping it. I did just that, and won the Denver Nuggets a championship against the Cleveland Cavaliers in 5 games. Yeah, of course, I would head to Cleveland the next season as a free agent and win them their second championship in the last three years.

Blacktop has once again become great in this game. New court, New uniforms, and new memories to have in this game. It would have been fun to have players in jerseys, but for the most part, Blacktop was alright.

Yes! The mode I wanted to play after I had 2K16, which unfortunately didn't have it. I was disappointed that 2K didn't put it in 2K16. It made the game rather stale quickly and kinda hard to come back to because 2K never had the effort to bring a mode that was in previous 2Ks on the last-gen, only to be missing in the next-gen. Now 2K has really done it in this game. Playoffs Mode is back! You can now finally play the Playoffs without doing a regular season. The best part of this returning mode: The Playoff Tree is all-customizable. You can keep Western Conference teams in the Western Conference Playoffs and Eastern Conference teams in the Eastern Conference Playoffs like usual, or put Western Conference teams in the Eastern Conference Playoffs and Eastern Conference teams in the Western Conference Playoffs. Playoffs Mode is back and you can make with what you want with it.

Ahhhhhh, but of course there are some problems I have with this game. As I have had so much fun in this game, there's still some issues that have deteriorated the expectations from the hype of this game.

#1 No Create-A-Team

I honestly forgot about this feature when I was making my first blog. I was trying to find some issues in NBA 2K16 to talk about and it got under my radar. Now that it got back in my mind, this blog is perfect for it. When 2K announced the League Expansion, 2K17 felt so amazing to begin with. The game was so hyped with this feature that when I saw the League Expansion blog on their Facebook, I immediately thought that Create-A-Team was gonna be in this game. It was going to be, in my opinion, the best 2K of all-time, but unfortunately, the feature never came back, therefore making the League Expansion feature to me feel flat. It's great to make teams in MyLeague, but don't you think it would be excellent to create teams outside of MyLeague, and be able to edit them in custom rosters, and put em in MyLeague? Its disappearance from the game makes the game a bit flat, but when you combine that with the fact that they just added the option to add 6 more teams in the league, the game becomes a lot flat and it speaks for the overhype that the game had.

#2 Missing Team

Y'all remember the 1985 76ers in NBA 2K16, right? Well, let's break it down: We all know Julius Erving was on that team. Well, it just so happened that Charles Barkley was on this team, in real life. It's amazing, except it's not amazing when it comes to 2K. Charles Barkley never showed up in 2K as a member of a NBA team. There are exceptions tho. Charles Barkley would be in NBA 2K13 in the Dream Team, and in this game, he is back again as a member of the Dream Team, in which 2K should be praised for bringing him back. Y'all of course know Charles Barkley wants 2K to pay the NBA Retired Players Association and NBA Players Association each a million dollars, right? Charles Barkley and 2K have been arguing for over 20 years and 2K just never gave a shit about it. They still haven't, unless they make amends this year. With the Dream Team coming back from 2K13, what slick thing does 2K do to make this game rather interesting? Oh yeah, that's right, they forget the 1985 76ers team on purpose because they don't care about the consistency of classic teams even tho they were in the game the year before without Charles Barkley! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST BRING THEM BACK WITHOUT CHARLES BARKLEY?! ESPECIALLY WHEN Y'ALL DIDN'T EVEN TALK TO CHARLES ABOUT PUTTING HIM IN THE GAME AS A NBA TEAM PLAYER!

#3 The best feature to use for Blacktop is not there.

Y'all remember 2k16 where you can use custom rosters for Blacktop? You remember how fun that was? Well, the first time I tried to use custom rosters in Blacktop, it didn't work. The second time I tried to use them, it didn't work, and when I searched for why it wasn't working, that... was enough to piss me off. Why? Just why did you not bring in a simple feature that was in the last game, only to just forget about it. It made no damn sense at all! To forget a feature you had in the last game is just the worst. But regardless, I still had fun with Blacktop. 2K had been doing well with Blacktop but they need better effort than this.

#4 Team Relocation is still terrible.

Despite 2K making huge improvements to MyLeague, 2K forgot about this problem again from 2k16. The glitch is still there in Team Relocation. I just don't get why 2K or anyone else but me has not addressed this issue.

Hopefully these issues are a thing of the past when NBA 2K20 comes out and fixes them.

So now, we cap off. NBA 2K17 with its overhype has made it a fairly good game. The gameplay's improved, the graphics improved, and the features improved. Everything about this game has made it seem that not only that it would be a great game, that it would be better than 2K11. This game had the potential to be special, and it was special. But there were questionable things in the game that have since deteriorated the overhype and so, there's everyone saying how bad this game is. But it is a good game. It's better than 2K16, but it has its own issues that kept it from going to the top, at least for a lot. So, it only went to the top a little bit. I really enjoyed this game, having fond memories of it, and will probably come back to it some time for nostalgia, cuz 2K putted lots of effort in it, which is cool. Well guys, that has been the story of my experience with NBA 2K17. I'll see you guys later.