by Isaiah Holm

The video game NBA 2K20, released early last month to much critical acclaim, still faces its fair share of criticism. The gameplay this year is amazing. With the addition of 40 new badges, every player plays in their own unique way. While the game itself is beautiful, the fact that the game was unfinished and full of bugs left many of the game’s die-hard fans upset and wanting more.

The staple of every 2K, Play Now, was left relatively unchanged. The mode itself is still the same, 5 v. 5 against a friend or the computer. The pregame show still has the familiar faces in Shaq, Kenny, and Ernie, however, the final member of the TNT crew Charles Barkley, is still noticeably absent. The commentators have new lines, although if someone plays the game a lot, they will still notice repeated lines and stories by them.

One of the new additions this year are the All-Decade teams. Players can now play against their friends using the best players of their chosen decade and settle arguments over when basketball was really “the best.” Another addition is the ability to choose the color of the accessories worn by the players during the game.

The most popular mode, MyCareer, has all sorts of new additions this year. The story mode is a completely unique experience this year. It features many high-level actors, such as Idris Elba and Rosario Dawson. While most NBA 2K20 MyCareer stories just have the basic story of a talented player working his way up into the league, this year’s story gives the player the ability to make choices that change the experience and also has a side story that has a greater meaning to it rather than just playing basketball, for example, when the main character sits out a playoff game to protest his teammate losing his scholarship due to an injury.

The online extension of MyCareer is the Neighborhood. Inside the Neighborhood, the player can go shopping for new clothes, play games in a neighborhood park setting, or play in the more competitive pro-am. However, since the Neighborhood last year received many negative reviews, many players wanted a new Neighborhood to play in.

Sadly, it is the same as last year which brought major critical backlash towards the developers and led many people to say that they would not buy the game just for that reason. However, once the game was released, the players realized that although the framework for the neighborhood was the same, there were many events throughout the week that changed how the neighborhood looked which resolved their complaints. The only new game mode that was added this year was 3-on-3 pro-am, which allows players to have a private matchup against their friends or hold a tournament, which was not possible in previous years.

Although the gameplay is amazing this year, the plethora of bugs has led to many gamers being upset that the game is unfinished. There have already been 5 patches and the game has only been out for less than a month. These patches have combined for over one hundred gigabytes which for people that have slow or metered internet, make it hard to even play the game. Although hasn’t received as much backlash when compared to the scandal in NBA 2K18, when gamer’s player files were being deleted, there are still a lot of bugs such as not being able to join a friend, getting disconnected from online play, and private matchmaking not working. The outrage has even gotten to the point where players are putting together a class-action lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive for false advertising.