NBA 2K21 (2020)

NBA 2K21 for PlayStation 5 is a significant advancement, featuring improved mechanics and aesthetics. Despite persistent issues with microtransactions, it remains the best basketball game available.

Moving into a new generation of consoles is always exciting. With sports games it is a mixed bag. The games always take the leap in terms of graphics, but seem to trim back the amount of features contained within. NBA 2K21 is a combination of both. While the graphics are next-level, there are also a host of improvements over the previous generation’s offering. Where it falls short though is failing to address the problems from the last gen version of the game. What we end up with is an impressive first outing that feels more like the target the team set out for early on.

New Review: NBA 2K21 – PS5 Review https://chalgyr.com/2020/11/review-ps5-nba2k21.html November 20, 2020 NBA 2K21 is generally a great way to usher in the new generation of consoles. The visuals and The City are a big step in the right direction. Some lessons were learned from the earlier release of NBA 2K21 on the last-gen consoles, and that made this a much smoother release experience. That being said, I still can’t shake the feeling I got during my initial review of this title on Xbox One a couple of months ago, that the development team was spread thin between prepping this title for two platforms and the release issues that I’ve encountered only reinforce that issue. Basketball fans will find lots to like here, even though there are some rough patches to be worked out. ---- Original Review: NBA 2K21 – XB1 Review https://chalgyr.com/2020/09/review-xb1-nba-2k21.html September 11, 2020 In all, NBA 2k21 is still the best sports experience on the market. That being said, this feels like a strange year for the series, given the pandemic, altered real life NBA season and split attention between two generations of console. There were few significant changes made, but almost all of those updates were for the better – except arguably the most important one. To change such a core mechanic as shooting so fundamentally is going to be polarizing and while I have been growing used to how it works, I think more tweaks need to be made to finetune the experience. It’s been a strange year and NBA 2k21 reflects that in a lot of ways. All things considered however, NBA 2K20 was easily my most played video game over the last year and I suspect that will be the case for my upcoming year and NBA 2K21.

While NBA 2K21 is clearly different from its predecessor in several ways, I can't say it's significantly better than what we saw last season. The game still looks fantastic, the commentary is still top-notch, and many of the same battles you might have had with the previous edition are still there, like whether you want to spend so much virtual and real money. If you don't have any basketball games in your library and want to change that, then by all means, this is as good as it can possibly get.

But if you're like me, playing every year, then know this: NBA 2K21 is the best basketball game around, but it's also the only one. And as any high-level competitor will tell you, that's never a good thing for long.