The 2k franchise is certainly one of the largest grifts in the videogame industry. So much so that at this point, with four iterations in a row of nearly identical games, it deserves some grudging respect. There are very few games who would so daringly and obviously turn their IP into a giant advertisement. "The Neighborhood", an online communal area where players can team up and play against one another, has quite literally turned into an online strip mall. Players can run into real life shoe stores, signs for popular sports drinks are plastered on every square inch of space, energy bars and drinks which boost your player’s performance are all product placement. There are even unskippable car advertisements before games. Most of the game modes are repetitive, filled with loot box mechanics to gather players to form your team while the management sim portions leave much to be desired.

The Career mode, however, is undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the game. It’s also one of the most important, as the player you create for the career is also used to play multiplayer. The story is nothing like anything I have ever experienced playing a videogame. Almost none of your interactions with any of the characters on your journey feel in any way like you are having a human conversation. Facial expressions don't make sense. Pauses in strange places and lasting the wrong amount of time. Sometimes conversations just completely derail. Your character's reactions to the things people say generally don't make sense. All of the characters seem to have trouble reading the general feeling within various situations, like dates that are meant to be relaxed are really tense and locker room discussions that are meant to be tense feel comical. In one scene your character may look unbothered about something someone said, and in the next they're absolutely enraged. Even the fake text messages are weird, with emojis in the wrong places or at the wrong times, and word choice just feels off.

It is so alien and foreign to the human experience that it transcends any simple distinction between “good” or “bad”. It feels as if a computer was tasked with collecting the scripts of the most famous sports movies, use them to form the basis of a plot structure, and then run the whole thing through a program called "human-based dialogue adjustments". It is an incredible experience, made even more incredible by the fact that the franchise is often able to draw big named writers to their team. Gazing upon your player’s twisted, tortured expression as he shares a joke with a teammate, who then stares unblinkingly into your characters soul for six seconds before laughing hysterically, is a truly disturbing experience. Listening to your character use internet slang from 2012 while on a first date with a love interest who is drilling you about being too arrogant after having just met you, made me embarrassed. As if I were sitting in a booth at a restaurant with a couple arguing one table over.

To know that someone wrote a story this soulless, so devoid of critique or higher meaning, leads me away from the conclusion that this is simply poor writing, and towards the idea that this is an inadvertent critique of not only the video game industry, but the entire economic system within which it is situated. Because the game itself, the simulation of the game of basketball, is actually quite well done. The movements of the players are fluid and relatively natural. The player is rewarded for smart play and the ai players act in relatively normal ways. It’s the best basketball game on the market, which makes its story stand out in even more marked relief. The career mode tells the story of a world dominated by endless consumption performed by irreparably alienated populous. A people whose screams of agony over their exploited labor is drowned not by the harsh jackboot of violence and repression, but soothed into the abyss by finding meaning through consumption. The competent basketball simulation is merely a platform for the real purpose of its existence: selling virtual currency, corporate sponsorship, product placement and brand building. The story of the game is this reality fully realized and articulated. Meaningless conversation and relationships come and go as the player proceeds towards their inevitable NBA career. The increasingly incoherent writing reaches a crescendo as the story nears its end, knowing that its time is short and that it is powerless to stop this slow march into a life devoid of meaning or purpose. Without strong relationships or a sense of community, the main character and likewise the player are left adrift in a confusing, alien life that doesn’t make sense and whose only recognizable features are flashes of corporate sponsorship and advertisements.

NBA 2k21 is, without a doubt, one of the strongest critiques of neoliberal capitalism that I have played in all my years. And for that, it should receive a well-deserved 2 stars.

I rated this game as a 3.5/5 a week after release, but after playing online... yeesh. 2K21 next-gen has kind of been rejected by the hardcore community the same way Call of Duty: Ghosts was rejected in favor of BLOPS II.

Let's start with some positives. The City is very visually appealing and a welcome change from the copy-pasted "Neighborhood" from the past couple of 2K releases. Graphically, the jersey materials, shading and lighting is very impressive. Skin tones are massively improved, making the player models look even better than they already were. It's a visual marvel.

Other than that... this game is busted. MyTeam and MyCareer are more monetized than ever. On MyCareer, a single game will probably only net you enough VC for a SINGLE ATTRIBUTE UPGRADE. In MyTeam, the introduction of seasons has ruined a mode which has been feasible to play no-money-spent in past years. Seasons is a battle pass-esque model, but unlike most battle passes in games like COD and Desitny, 2K seasons awards game-breaking cards the higher and higher you level up. You can get more XP by scoring with new cards which will cost you real world money to acquire. The servers are booty cheeks, The City is a pretty but over glorified commercial, the Curry slide and fadeaway shots are broken beyond belief, the 6'7" demigod build has completely ruined pickup games and I have never seen as many cheaters using the CronusMax on a game since Warzone.

One day I'll get out of this abusive relationship.

It's fun some times. Got me to at least finish season 1 and win an NBA title with my created player. Just didn't fire consistently though. My team would at times just forget what they were doing (not play defense, stand by the hoop uncovered with the ball and just pivot around, etc.). Also, I can't believe there were not sliders to fine tune my experience. My player had a 95 in 3-pointers, a HoF badge that said it ignored defenders when shooting, a gold badge in catch & shoot and a gold badge in corner shots. I wanted to just drain 3's like Steph Curry, but the game wouldn't do that. Also, nobody would ever set a screen for me and roughly 50% of the time when I set a screen, my teammates would just stand there with the ball.