Count me among the people who aren’t too fond of some of the Jay-Z inspired changes in the menus and overlays this year, but I can work around them (and for those of us on PC, no doubt they will be modded by the community in time).
Since EA has a lengthy partnership with ESPN, it would be nice if 2K could get the TNT license, especially as they’ve already got Kevin Harlan and Steve Kerr on commentary. I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of the style as it’s a bit distracting at times, but I’ve kind of gotten used to it as I’ve played the demo.
Hopefully the PC version will benefit from the improvements to online support, as that’s the platform I’ll be playing on and I’d at least like to have the option to play online.Ī quick word on presentation this year. The sound did seem to glitch during the game but apart from that, it was a reasonably stable and enjoyable online experience. It found an opponent for me fairly quickly and the game ran quite smoothly, with very minimal lag.
I’m still more of an offline gamer but as the demo is online enabled, I did try out a quick online game.
On the whole the gameplay experience is shaping up to be quite pleasing, though I’m looking forward to trying other difficulty and slider settings in the full game. I’d say they’ll be more noticeable in longer gameplay, but the demo should allay any concerns that they are an ability that can be spammed and exploited, which of course was an issue with NBA Live’s Freestyle Superstars concept in years gone by.
I didn’t notice Signature Skills coming into play too much and that’s a good thing, suggesting they won’t be too overpowering. Even without calling plays, players are still trying to make cuts, get into position and so forth, and it seems as though the right players are getting the most touches and taking the most shots, which was still a bit problematic in NBA 2K12. Issues like speed differentiation seem to be better, though it feels like the CPU still has an advantage here, especially when it comes to sticking with an opponent on defense. It’s hard to evaluate the strategy and AI in five minutes of demo gameplay with playcalling disabled, but I did notice a few improvements over last year. I haven’t played much NBA 2K12 in the last couple of months either, so I’ve probably also fallen back into some bad habits with stick movement and turbo usage. There are a couple of animations that I’m not a big fan of, still some out of control moments, but for the most part player movement looks good and the work they put into transitioning between animations is looking like it’s paid off. The more I played the demo, the more accustomed I grew to the new controls and I do expect that I will be able to get a good handle on them and enjoy the game, but they weren’t quite what I was expecting.Īt times I also felt that players were a bit too heavy in my hands compared to the CPU players, who seem much lighter on their feet. To me it feels like there isn’t quite enough of a change from Isomotion, which I’ve grown used to in recent years but still felt was a bit clunky and cumbersome at times. My slight disappointment in the controls stems from the fact that I was hoping they would be a little more similar to Freestyle Control and its variants in NBA Live. However, I do anticipate having a lot of fun with this year’s game after getting a better handle on them.
I did go back and forth at times as there were moments of frustration and some disappointment, mostly in regards to the controls. With that said, after playing several games of the NBA 2K13 demo I came away with mostly positive impressions of the game.
The NBA 2K13 demo is no different, so if you’re making the switch to 2K this year or are on the fence about upgrading from NBA 2K12, I’d suggest finding a way to spend some time with the full version after it comes out if you need help making up your mind. I won’t go into too much detail as I plan on posting an in-depth review when I get my hands on the full version of the game, but here are some of my thoughts on the demo and the expectations it’s given me for the finished product.Īs always, I feel it’s worth mentioning that the NBA 2K demos are traditionally underwhelming, being very stripped down to the point of not doing the full game justice. Before then, I just wanted to post a few quick impressions of the demo that came out last week, which I’ve played several games of on the Xbox 360.
In about 24 hours, NBA 2K13 will be hitting store shelves in North America and made available to download from digital distributors (except Amazon, who have apparently delayed their digital release until October 16th).