'NBA 2K18' Early Reviews, Impressions: The Best NBA Simulation Returns, Now With More Microtransactions
"NBA 2K18" is here, and it's even more realistic in the way it represents player skills and overall team styles. The result is a more engaging career mode, which can be made even more enjoyable by paying more money to get just about anything the game has to offer.
Players are even more nuanced than in the previous game, with the roster reacting pretty much how they would in a real NBA game, as IGN notes. Even referee tendencies have been baked in, and "NBA 2K18" now rewards extensive knowledge of the opposing team's players more than ever.
The new Neighborhood mode makes the career mode much more immersive, as a free-roaming mode in the style of "Grand Theft Auto" lets players go for pick-up games and even trivia contests in an open world setting.
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The catch to the new career mode, however, is the change to the game's Virtual Currency. Everything in the game now runs on VC, from skill upgrades to tattoos. Players who got the $150 bundle got a huge boost up, even in multiplayer, as a result.
Even things like seeing a haircut on a custom player cost VC, and they're not cheap, either. It's a good thing 2K Games offers 75,000 VC for just $20, considering that putting on even the default 2K brand tattoo on your player costs $1,000 a pop, as Kotaku reviewed.
In a multiplayer setting where overall ratings can be boosted by VC, this gives the rich a huge leg-up already.
The overall verdict, just days after the game launched, is a mixed bag. Critics generally give glowing praise to the game as suggested by its Metacritic score, currently at 87 for the Xbox One version, and 88 for the PlayStation 4.
User reviews on Metacritic have roundly dissed the game, however, with "NBA 2K18" currently getting "Generally unfavorable reviews" for both versions, mostly from users citing the glut of microtransactions in the game.
The video below shows cover player Kyrie Irving, now updated to his new number 11 Boston Celtics jersey. The game is now out for consoles and PC.
