NBA 2K17: Reviewing ‘The Prelude’
Welcome to NBA 2K17 week as we are just four days — if you preordered, that is, from getting to play the lone basketball simulation game on the market. To help prepare us for what is already being called the series’ magnum opus, 2K Sports has given us “The Prelude,” a free add-on where we build our MyPlayer and guide him through college.
I talked a lot about “The Prelude” last week so I’ll spare you most of the details, but I won’t spare you is a review of the DLC. If you’ve yet to play or complete “The Prelude,” please keep in mind that this article has spoilers on this year’s MyCareer story; there’s nothing too serious when it comes to the spoilers like character deaths or any major plot twists, but there are a couple of surprises in the mode that you may want to save for yourself.
This article, if you either don’t care about the spoilers or already have completed the mode, will touch on gameplay, the story, and other observations from the first piece of NBA 2K17 that we have actual access to. It’s also important to note that anything announced for this year’s MyCareer game that is not in “The Prelude” will not be touched upon here and I instead point you to last week’s article about the add-on.
Without any more waiting, get your Hanes on, lace up your Nikes, grab your Wheaties and your Gatorade, and we’ll pick up a Big Mac on the way to the ballpark because it is game time.
The Creation
As with every character creation, you are asked to pick a position and what he excels in — point guards, for example, could be a shot creator like Chris Paul or a slasher like Russell Westbrook, while centers may be a glass cleaner similar to DeAndre Jordan or an athletic finisher following in the footsteps of Anthony Davis. What 2K did this year, however, is they’ve put certain skill caps on each position subcategory so there’s no more “cheesing” and turning a dominant center into a sharpshooter with the three-point precision of Stephen Curry.
If you downloaded the MyNBA2K app for your cell phone or tablet, you could take a selfie and use that face scan as the base for your player. Some pic-to-game transfers didn’t go so well, but others were absolutely spot-on.
My mans Jay Z face scan turned out perfect pic.twitter.com/CCMGibaCja
— Jet Taylor (@JetDaHitmaka) September 10, 2016
When you’re designing your player, you still have to use the-in game currency (VC) to buy tattoos and even basic clothing so that your player isn’t always wearing a brown shirt and sweatpants. I’d have liked to see 2K allocate a certain amount of VC that can only go towards the design of your player, whether it’s clothing you’d wear on Park (i.e. a classic Lakers jersey) or tattoos to give your player some more character, but that will have to wait until next year.
The Prez-edential Candidate
After our run with “Freq” last year, our player goes by the nickname of “Prez,” short for the “President of Basketball.” Apparently, the nickname comes from “Prez” declaring for his college draped in an American flag, but your high school coach calls you by the nickname before you made your college choice public? It’s a nitpick, but after some more thought following last week’s preview, at least “Prez” isn’t as bad as “Frequency Vibrations.”
While we were promised branching storylines for this year’s game, none of that is to be seen in “The Prelude” as all of Prez’s actions — aside from his college choice — are already written into the script. For the second straight year, postgame press conferences and interviews are curiously absent from your time in college, a surprising exclusion given how important a player’s attitude ranks on some team’s draft boards.
Unlike last year where you played high school games in addition to high school games, NBA 2K17 only has you take part in several collegiate games — not that those high school games are missed, however. Regardless of which team you choose, you’re guaranteed a Midnight Mania game, an early November game that is likely opening night or the home opener, your first national television appearance in mid-January, and a game in the National Semifinals. Win your Final Four game and you’ll get a chance in the National Championship, one where your team doesn’t seem to get all that excited if you manage to cut down the baskets.
Along the way, you’ll meet characters like your mom, who appears throughout the story with some phone calls and words of advice (as well as an empty threat to talk to your coach about playing time), your roommate, a senior point guard named Alabaster who may remind some long-time players of the agent from NBA 2K14, and an un-named girlfriend who feels much more realistic and human than the sex object that was Yvette in last year’s game.
“The Prelude” also offers a sports talk show titled :24 (orally pronounced 24 seconds), hosted by the fictional Jason Richmond who will either praise Prez or boldly claim that it’s time to impeach the president. Rather than make him out to be a Skip Bayless-type who will always hate on the highly-touted even if they set records, Richmond’s comments depend on how well Prez plays on the court — average a double-double and avoid mistakes and the host will commend you, while subpar games that contribute to a loss means you’ll be roasted for 24 seconds. There’s no word on how much Richmond will appear in the retail copy, but I’m personally hoping we do get to see some more of :24 once Prez hits the pros.
As was to be expected, Michael B. Jordan’s character of Justice Young was not seen and likely will be introduced when the retail version of the game starts. Alabaster, however, more than makes up for it with a performance that sees him act not like the spoiled brat that Vic Van Lier Bo$$ Key Yacht$ was last year or the jerk Jackson Ellis was in NBA 2K14, but a teammate that has a legitimate friendship and bond with Prez. There’s no forced dialogue between the two or cringe worthy moments, but instead what feels to be a true college friendship — especially when Alabaster has Prez ask his mom to send more food to their dorm room.
The Time Of Your Life
Even if 2K Sports has made some curious decisions in the past, they’ve done what’s really been a great job when it comes to the college experience these past couple years. It’s not the NCAA Football 2007 college life where you actually have to take tests and go to social events, but we don’t need that in NBA 2K17 because the college experience here is more on the story than what student-athletes actually have to go through with regards to tests, bus trips, and the urge to fight off the human desire to get “illegal benefits” from donors.
It’s absolutely amazing, though, how well 2K has perfected the atmosphere for a set of games that at the max come out to be five; the mascots look absolutely amazing, marching bands play their trademark music (I was disappointed to not hear a marching band version of the national anthem, however), and the crowds come alive even if the often-legendary signs that college students make are nowhere to be seen.
Unfortunately, the college experience only lasts those four or five games as Prez automatically declares for the NBA after his freshman year. To me, this is where the true problem with “The Verdict” begins as because we’re only given one chance to make this work and one year in college, we don’t have the opportunity to improve our stock if our first year goes poorly. It adds to the challenge and makes the college games mean something, which I respect, but why not give us the option to go back to college if a scouting report or a mock draft has us projected to go towards the end of the first round or even to start the second?
What also hurts is that even though you receive VC after each game and can actually make a nice earning if you play well, you’re still nearly guaranteed to end “The Prelude” with an overall that’s anywhere between 56-58. Again, if this is supposed to be the top high school player in the country, why not have him starting college off somewhere in the mid-to-high 60s? Unless our player is going to receive some kind of general ratings boost depending on where we’re drafted in the retail version, that also means this number one prospect could have an overall in the high 50s despite going third overall or forty-third overall.
That is, unless you actually buy VC with your own money. 2K Sports is a business and they certainly run their business pretty well, but this again is a slap in the face to the consumer who doesn’t want to use their (or their father’s) credit card on a virtual character that can’t be carried over to the next game.
Final Verdict
After your college experience concludes and you enter the draft, you find out from Adam Silver that the team who has picked you is…and it ends right there. Yes, you actually have to wait until the retail copy to find out what team drafted you and where. People are going to hate the cliffhanger, but I’ve seen so much positive reception to this idea and I think this ending, which really came off as unexpected, perfectly fits “The Prelude” and the experience that 2K was hoping to give us.
Following in the style of Marvel movies, there’s also a “post-credits” scene where Prez gets a call from Mike Krzyzewski and is invited to play for Team USA. What’s nice about this is that there’s no waiting until the retail copy to play alongside Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant; when the call ends, you then get to play in the Olympic championship against Australia for Team USA, though the rest of Team USA is interestingly not used in the game’s “2KU” tutorial mode.
In a time where so many gaming companies are seemingly content with just re-hashing the same old game knowing that people will buy it anyway, NBA 2K17‘s “The Prelude” continues to prove that Take-Two wants to break new ground and set the bar even high for both themselves and the industry.
Overall, I’m going to give “The Prelude” a 9 out of 10 and recommend that you download it as soon as possible. The flaws are there and the computer AI can be a bit confusing at times, but this has so many of the improvements we wanted after last year’s disaster of a MyPlayer story. Prez feels real, his friends feel real, and there’s no more Vic Van Lier. What’s not to love?
If “The Prelude” is a sign of things to come for NBA 2K17, then the game is most definitely going to follow in the footsteps of cover athlete Kobe Bryant by putting on a show every time it takes the court.
[Image via 2K Sports]