NBA 2K18: The Most Insulting 2K of All-Time

So, NBA 2K18? It has been two years since I got this crap and it's completely out of my head now. When everyone had problems with 2K17, it was mostly issues that happened at the beginning of the game when it came out. The game counting threes as twos, the scoreboard glitching, and the dead ass A.I., those issues made 2K17 to most people a bad 2K. I never necessarily had these issues because I got the game on Christmas, in which the game was already patched, so it was great to not have any problems on Christmas onward. But the game still fell a little flat to the ground because while it had improvements, I felt like the game still felt like it needed more to offer on the table, and it just never grew to be the best 2k of all-time. This game, however, was bullshit. This game by the time the Shaq Legend Edition Announcement trailer came out was so overhyped for 2K to mess it up, and they messed it up! It made no damn sense for 2K to be so damn greedy to ruin this game and let it be unanimously bashed by everyone on the planet for the game that it is today. After all the overhype in 2K17, this game did not live up to it and thus, the overhype died. This was the first 2K since 2K took the basketball video game market in 2007 in which nobody had played it a lot after experiencing the bullshit in this game. And to back that statement up, here are the reasons why NBA 2K18 is the most insulting 2K of all-time.

But first, the good things about this game, because there's too much bad stuff I want to talk about in this game to expose the fuck out of 2K. I want to talk about the good things first because just like 2K17, 2K18 had the potential to become the best 2K of all-time, except this time, it was more stupid fucked and miserable. But I'll save my energy for later on. First off, I like the menu. It's pretty good. I like the fact that you can move around the menu with the right stick.

The gameplay is somewhat solid. There are new controls like the cradle layups, in which you drive to the basket and hold the right stick to the left or right (depending on your ball hand) and back toward your ball hand. They also revamp the Euro Step Layup where you use the same buttons but instead away from your ball hand. The graphics are once again great. The player facescans and body types are once again improving as 2K goes on.

The features in this game are great and once again, like 2K17, have improved. Oh my God, the Neighborhood looked amazing. Y'know, when I was playing MyPark on 2K17, it was great to explore three different parks, and now in NBA 2K18, We legitimately have a town to explore on. The Neighborhood has your MyCourt in a hotel and MyPark as a new area called The Playground. The Playground is the only Park in the game, so unfortunately, the other parks we all know and love dearly from 2K17: Sunset Beach, Rivet City, and Old Town aren't here anymore in this game. 2K Pro-Am is back as well. The Neighborhood also has shops and a game zone where you can play a arcade basketball game as if the basketball world couldn't be any more real in a basketball video game like real life ever before.

MyLeague, once again has many improvements. This time around, 2K added even more new features to MyLeague. This amount of features impressed me from the Analytics Tool to the Jumpshot Creator being in Edit Player, making MyLeague more better than it was. However, the bullshit in this game that I'm going to talk about later in this blog dried my excitement out of this game, continuing the trend in which I haven't played a full season of MyLeague on any next-gen 2K since getting 2K16. Don't get me wrong. MyLeague is good in this game. I just never had the time to play a lot of it, due to well, y'know what I'm about to talk about later on.

Speaking of the Neighborhood, MyCareer would feature a brand-new upgrade system called The Road To 99. The system is very simple to understand, as the way of improving your skills is to play excellent basketball, by scoring and making plays in every single game that you play. At the end of every game, you will then be greeted to the Road To 99 hub, where your overall performance will be calculated to a total score, which will fill up your cap breaker bar, similar to the Doin Work Meter in 2K17. When you fill up your Cap Breaker, you'll unlock more attribute upgrades. Creating a simple formula for the perfect experience in MyCareer: You play hard, fill up your Cap Breaker, unlock more attribute upgrades which will allow you to upgrade more attributes and repeat, getting you more and more closer to 99 Overall.

2K17's Doin Work System was alright, except for the fact where it was half-assed. For one thing, 2K made the Doin Work System a limited system, in which once you got all cap upgrades, the fucking meter would disappear and never come back, which means you are actually capped at 95 instead of 99. What?! You want to know how to get the rest of those cap upgrades? You have to play MyPark. What, What, Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that the Doin Work Meter is there until I worked hard enough in which I done worked my ass off to get to 99, only to get to 95, and I have to play MyPark to get to 99 Overall? That's strange. And you want to know what's the worst part about this? 2K never even had the fucking intention of telling us that we needed to play MyPark and have our Park Rep to SuperStar 5 to get to 99 Overall. Finding about this was already bad enough, but what was more worse was the Park Rep reset glitch, where for some stupid reason, your Park Rep resets back to Rookie 1 for no reason at all.

What the fuck was 2K doing not addressing that Park Rep reset glitch issue, making me not be at 99 Overall with the Doin Work Meter forever in the first place?! But yeah, because of this, Road to 99 is better because it applies to all games played in MyCareer. Badges have a huge upgrade from last year as you can do drills in your team practice facility to fill the badge meter up to unlock and upgrade them.

I absolutely love MyPlayer this year. I've never did a face scan in which my MyPlayer's face absolutely looked like mine. My 2K17 MyPlayer's face did look like mine, but it was a little messed up, but hey, e for effort, I guess.

It was so crazy that MyGM would have a new story at the time. I'm not much of a MyGM fan and have only played a little bit of it due to its limits, but this is amazing because we now have a mode other than MyCareer that has a story. I've never expected this from 2K, but kudos to them for trying something unexpectedly new.

Now for the bad stuff. Finally the bad stuff! The problems... is everything else in this damn game. The things that 2K did to make this game bad for money is just absolute bullshit, and seeing how many people were bashing this game, I'll give you 6 reasons why this game is bullshit garbage!

#1 No 2K Beats Soundtrack in Games

This was the first thing I noticed when playing the game for the first time. You guys remember how good 2K13's soundtrack was? Most of you guys love the soundtrack. If you go to the settings in Options in this game, the 2K Beats In-Game Volume Slider that we had is gone. Guess what happens when you play a game of 2K? No Music! WHY?! JUST WHY?! HOW FUCKING DUMB DID 2K HAVE TO BE FOR NOT HAVING THIS IN THE GAME? A BASIC FEATURE THAT THEY HAD PUT IN PAST 2Ks FOR MANY YEARS SOMEHOW ISN'T IN THIS GAME?! THIS IS SUCH A GOOD SOUNDTRACK AND I COULDN'T WAIT TO GET THE GAME AND ENJOY THE SOUNDTRACK. BUT THAT'S THE PROBLEM. I HAVE TO ENJOY THE SOUNDTRACK ON THE MENUS. PLAYING THE GAME WITHOUT IT WAS FINE BUT OMG IT WAS BETTER WITH THE SOUNDTRACK. IT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE FOR 2K TO NOT HAVE THIS IN 2K18 AND IT'S A DAMN SHAME ON THEM!

#2 The Ted Stephien Rule is ass

2K added the Ted Stephien Rule as a part of the new 2017 NBA CBA. While having the feature being used as a option in MyLeague Settings is a plus, the execution of it was shitty. When it was turned on, I tried to trade the 2018 and 2020 first round picks but the damn prompt came up saying "You can't trade 2 consecutive first round picks". ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? THESE TWO PICKS AREN'T EVEN CONSECUTIVE. THE 2019 FIRST ROUND PICK ISN'T EVEN GETTING TRADED. I TRIED TURNING IT OFF BUT IT ALLOWS THE 2019 PICK TO BE TRADED. THIS DAMN FEATURE IS BROKEN AND 2K SHOULD KNOW BETTER PUTTING IN A NEW FEATURE LIKE THIS. JUST BULLSHIT TERRIBLE!

#3 Contracts are still ass in this game for the third time

Once again, this pisses me off. It's been three games in a row that you can't give star players minimum contracts if you want to. The ambition attributes ain't doing shit! The Player Non-Financial Ambitions Factor slider ain't doing shit! These minimum contracts can't be signed how we want it to be signed because once again, there's no damn way to get rid of player interest. THIS MAKES MYLEAGUE TERRIBLE, CUZ IT HAS BEEN DAMN THREE YEARS IN A ROW WHERE 2K AIN'T FUCKING ADDRESSING THIS SHITTY ASS ISSUE!

Now these next three issues that I'm gonna talk about are the biggest issues in the game and they all come from one important game mode: MyCareer. That's right! The reasons why this 2K is so fucking bad is because of these three MyCareer issues.

#4 Offline MyCareer is Okay, but Crap

OMG, I don't think 2K has fucked up a lot until this very point. Offline MyCareer is very fucking limited. There's no VC, no Neighborhood, no Story, no MyCourt, no Team Practice Facility, which also means no Drills, no Gatorade Gym, no Shops, no Playground, no 2K Pro-Am, no Road To 99 rewards, no Team Influence, and most importantly, no MyPlayer Lab, which means no other signature animations. I honestly don't know what the fuck was 2K drinking, but this is the most laziest crap they've ever done. In 2K16, they had the story offline, and I played MyCareer on Offline. In 2K17, they had the story offline, and I played MyCareer on Online. In 2K18, they fucked up so bad. They made the story exclusive to the Online servers becoming more greedy for VC than their already greedy shit ass selves. WHY WOULD THE FUCK WOULD THEY DO THIS SHIT?!

#5 Hall of Fame like Pro Difficulty

OMG! I swear to fucking God, this is what turned me off for this game for the most part. In MyCareer this year, for some damn reason, the damn gameplay is fucked up because of this difficulty. When you first start MyCareer, you play these three Proving Ground games. OMG, I swear to fucking God that the gameplay of these three games are fucking terrible. For one damn thing, the fucking opposing team always hit contested threes. I just don't fucking get it. I always do great defense only to get splashed at. Why isn't the fuck they missing? And another thing, layups are fucking stupid as hell. They won't hit, no matter how good I release, they just won't fucking hit. To make things worse, it's like my teammates don't know shit. They don't make plays, they waste time in opportunities to score, it's like I always have to do stuff, when really, my teammates are supposed to have capabilities of their own. ABSOLUTE BS! CRAP SHIT BS!

#6 Missing MyCareer Rookie Difficulty

Yes! That's right, y'all! The main reason why NBA 2K18 is deemed the worst 2K of all-time is because 2K didn't put Rookie Difficulty in MyCareer! 2K! WHAT FUCKING CRACK WERE Y'ALL PIPING ON? WHHHHYYYY... IN THE FUCKING HELL WOULD Y'ALL NOT PUT A SIMPLE DIFFICULTY SETTING IN MYCAREER?! WHY DID YOU LET THIS GAME DIE BECAUSE OF DUMBASS GAMEPLAY, DUMBASS OPPOSING TEAM, AND DUMBASS... EVERYTHING?! BECAUSE OF YOUR FUCKING STUPIDITY, I'LL NEVER EXPERIENCE THE STORY! BECAUSE OF YOUR GREEDYNESS WITH VC, I'LL NEVER EXPERIENCE ALL OF MYCAREER! BECAUSE OF YOU NOT PUTTING IN ROOKIE DIFFICULTY IN MYCAREER, I CAN'T ENJOY MYCAREER, THEREFORE TURNING ME OFF OF EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME, IN WHICH I JUST CAN'T! THIS IS THE MOST DUMBASS DECISION YOU'VE EVER MADE AND Y'ALL MIGHT AS WELL BE BEAT BY NBA LIVE! MOTHERFUCKING TERRIBLE!

So, to cap off, despite the game having new features, this game fell flat on its ass real quick. The issues in MyCareer along with the lack of consistency of other features in the game really took a toll on the game itself. The soundtrack in this game is very good. I think this soundrack would be one of the best soundtracks in this series alongside NBA 2K13, and it's a shame that you can't listen to it while playing normal NBA games, which means the soundtrack is a waste. They fucking forgot to put in a simple feature that they had put in previous 2Ks for many years. It's honestly just a mess. If 2K didn't put the new features in this game, this game honestly in a way wouldn't matter, cuz the game would still be shitty, but with more shittiness. But they put them in the game anyway, and as good as the new features are, that doesn't change the fact that 2K ruined MyCareer by making it more dumber than ever before. This was the first 2K I've ever had in which MyCareer turned out to be a bad mode. And because of 2K's fucking greediness into making MyCareer bad, the new features are also wasted. A waste of time, effort and I would say money, but we can all agree that because 2K overhyped this shitty ass game so much that they have now earned like what, $1,499,900,000, that it's not a waste of money. Like I said, it's just a disaster! It's kinda uncommon for these bad games to come........... actually, it's pretty common now. Well, now that I have bashed this dumpster fire, I hoped you enjoyed the blog. I'm Tavon and I'll see you guys later!