Finally NBA 2K16 is out!

Although for hardcore 2K fans, you probably bought NBA 2K16 : Early Tip-off Edition or NBA 2K16 Michael Jordan Special Edition, allowing you to own the game since last Friday. I decided to buy said Early Tip-off Edition, my thinking is I would buy the game anyways (I own every 2K since it’s inception)… why not get some additional free goodies, as well as getting to play the game a whole five days earlier.

Here are my first impressions of NBA 2K16 after spending a good majority of the weekend playing NBA 2K16, mostly playing the online mode. I like to play online to see what kind of exploits (cheese) players use. First few games I only played with my favorite team (New York Knicks) and player (Dirk Nowitzki), afterwards I mostly played with random teams to see how each individual player and team plays like.

Before getting started I would just like to put a disclaimer that my first impressions of NBA 2K16 are for the PlayStation 3. I am waiting for a price drop for the PlayStation 4 before I upgrade (Or a new God of War game, whichever comes first). First off, holy crap…the Knicks are terrible… I especially had problems when cheesers would set deny ball on everyone and attempt to steal every single second… Yes I know that I can just press triangle to protect the ball…and it probably would have helped if I was more familiar with each player’s shot because I was missing good wide-open shots.

Looking back I probably should have also tried to slow down the pace of the game but nonetheless I feel like there should be a bigger penalty for players constantly trying to deny the ball. I understand it is a viable basketball strategy but maybe those players should lose stamina faster for sticking on a player to constantly deny a pass. I fared better against this cheese when I controlled a viable post player and was able to slow down the pace and control the tempo, in particular when I was able to dump the ball into the post to Nowitzki for a fadeaway.

One notable positive is that individual players stand out more and more each year. For instance in past 2Ks all the bigs basically felt the same, every big was essentially the most useful when used in a Tyson Chandler mold. The way you would use any big even a couple of years ago was just to set pick and rolls and literally only dunk the ball on offense.

This year more than ever it seems bigs are being more individualized. This was especially true when I playing with the Detroit Pistons and noticed just how dominate Andre Drummond was. Drummond leaped over everyone gobbling up every rebound. Also Drummond actually felt more mobile, moving faster than your typical centers, being true to his on-court counterpart. I love that Drummond actually feels like Drummond, and that players like Robin Lopez does not. Which kinda sucked when I was playing with New York…but at least it is realistic.

Another example of improvement in how bigs play in NBA 2K, which actually is not new to this year’s game but am glad to see, is that bigs no longer can just dunk in your face. Players like Lopez and Chris Kaman cannot just dunk all willy nilly, the only time I was actually dunking at will was when I played with the Los Angeles Clippers and that is pretty realistic being “Lob City”.

Another positive is that quicker players no longer seem to be stopped by bigger slower players impeding their way. In year’s past slower players can stop the quicker player by just being in the vicinity and the quicker player for some reason would get sucked into the player’s gravitational pull… This year the quicker players are able to turn the corner on the slower player to get to the rim, which is more realistic.

Now on the flip-side of this… one cheese that I could not figure out at all… which was very interesting to face up against… was when one cheeser constantly attacked the paint by using some layup exploit… The player used the Minnesota Timberwolves and constantly attacked the paint with Andrew Wiggins and sometimes with Zach LaVine. When I realized what spot he was taking off from, I still could not stop it…even if I beat him to the spot… Wiggins would either still make a stupid low percentage layup or draw the foul…

Drawing the foul was probably even more annoying because I probably should have stopped the exploit but instead the cheeser is going to the line for the two points AND putting my players in foul trouble… It looked like he kept adjusting his original layup by pressing square, square. Whatever this cheesy layup animation is…and whatever this bullshit drawing foul is…2K PLEASE fix this…and if anyone knows how to stop this, leave a comment and let me know, it would be much appreciated.

Another cheese that 2K NEEDS to adjust IMMEDIATELY is the sliders to the success rate of passing in mid-shot/mid-air… I faced players that constantly attacked the rim in an animation to do a layup and then passed the ball off… the success rate needs to decrease on such a dangerous play… Either the recipient of the pass should not be able to handle the pass and turn the ball over more often (or at all…because a turnover barely occurs…), or the ball should fly out of control. 2K did this to the full court pass cheesing years back, and should do it for this cheese…2K PLEASE FIX THIS! The success rate is just way, WAY too high for this nonsense.

Another major problem that actually seemed to occur more and more as the weekend went on, was that players somehow just kept making three-pointers no matter what… This exploit featured two star players in particular, Stephen Curry and James Harden. They would just crossover all around the perimeter and jack up a shot… At first I did not realize this but even as I caught on… and tried to deny the three-pointer and eventually resorting to double-teams getting a hand in the player’s face…the three-pointer would still fall… I could not comprehend this…I do not understand if these players just knew their stroke that well…or if it was some kind of exploit…either way…I think when two players have a hand in the shooters face…the three-point success rate should probably fall…that is if the goal of 2K is to be a simulation game.

I know it sounds like I am complaining a lot but all and all I still enjoyed playing NBA 2K16, particularly when I did not have to face a cheeser. One last and final compliant that decreased the enjoy-ability of the game is the internet connection for the PlayStation Network. I do not know if it is my own FIOs connection or if it was just 2K servers working out bugs, but like 20% of my games ended in disconnect. Some of the games seem to be players “pulling the plug” because I was winning but some just seemed to come out of the blue… Hopefully this is an issue that will be fixed soon because this is an issue that sours casual fans.

Please feel free to comment, and let us know at the Daily Knicks what your experience playing NBA 2K16 has been like. What are your first impressions of the game? Also let us know if you would like more NBA 2K16 coverage. And again, if you know how to stop some of the cheeses I mentioned above, it would be greatly appreciated if you let me know the counter for them are.