Let me start off by saying the only real draw of the NBA games is the my player experience. I'm also playing as a center. The UI is really ugly and a pain to use. To be honest the menu seemed like it would be so frustrating for the my gm association like mode I couldn't even bring myself to try it. The menu's aren't nicely laid out like in previous versions of the game and it makes finding what you want or navigating for casual stats really time consuming. Speaking of stats, gone are the days of being able to see your box score after a game is completed. Once the game end's its basically straight to traveling to the next place. If you want to check the box score for you and your team you must go forth into the dreaded UI menu's of death. Which is a moderate inconvenience when your throwing up 28 points and shooting 80%+ off the bench and end up losing and want to see why.
From what I've seen about 20 games into the season this game is more silly than realistic. You can easily get caught on teammates or be stuck in a, i backed into a guy at walking speed so I obviously need to get thrown 4 feet away from him because that's how people react when bumping into each other. The collision of players into each other is good at times and bad the majority of the time. You will try and post up on someone or walk by them and get caught in that awkward I'm just gonna place my hand on your chest and gently walk across the court with you motion because that's the natural moving sticky option. And the game still insists on making simply turning or changing directions while on the court difficult. You will be facing left and simply tell your player to move right and he has a giant spaz attack and either runs in a huge circle or turns at the speed of a sloth making quick motions difficult. Especially if your character is facing left and you hit the turbo as you turn right you just run straight left because multitasking is apparently hard. Also, like all NBA games when running back to defense your player will sometimes do the slow jog backwards during a fast break when you just want him to turn and save turbo.
There are still some bizarre 2k issues other than the movement. One game I got caught in this weird, your cold after going 3-3. And my guy simply couldn't stop being cold no matter how many shots I made in a row yet I was on fire on defense for no reason. I think it was just a weird bug as it only happened once. I've also had moments of a player literally doing a lay up and ghosting through my body or my face getting stuck in someones hand when they are shooting and it doesn't even block the shot.
All the cut scenes feel silly as as the main review said the fact that the majority of people who you have them with don't talk make it feel even more ridiculous. Which makes no sense because those are the same people who have real voice work in the half time and end game interviews. You feel more like your watching some corny indie movie about a young street kid who is finally gonna be something when watching most of the cut scenes early on. Also be prepared to make a tool of your character so the team will have good chemistry and like you. Like being their luggage mule or wearing a red clown nose in all public situations. Many times the social media one liners and talks the coach has with you don't make sense. Like being put in the 4th down by 16 and being told to win the game. Then having social media and the coach talk about how your playing poorly when you go 17 points, shooting 80% with 5 blocks and 4 rebounds off the bench.
I'm on the kings and my team plays zero defense. You regularly will see the other team not miss any shots for almost an entire quarter because your team just doesn't understand how to cover someone or put a hand in their face. But the bad defense could be because our coach plays us as create chaos on defense and it's just my team. Your teammates also tend to do stupid things like chasing down a ball that's out of bounds off an opponents shot and try and save it because why take the free possession. Or they will dribble in place for 22 seconds and then give you the ball with 2 seconds left or take some crazy guy in your face 3 pointer instead of moving the ball around normally.
On a positive note, if you do post up they added a lot more variety to beating the defender and the shooting mechanic's are still really tight and well done. The game itself is also really really pretty. Your player doesn't start as a 50 overall pile of turd this time. I picked all around and within 20 games i was already a 73. You start at something like a 68 which is a huge improvement for early games. As long as your not on a cold streak this version is also way more generous with making shots as a player. You don't miss wide open deep 2's simply because you have a medium shot of 50. The release point for your shots also seems to have a bigger grace period, outside of free throws which feels way more stingy. Only against the good teams like the Thunder and Lakers do you suffer from the we were down by 2 I got subbed out we are down by 18 now syndrome. Which is an improvement from that happening regularly in last year's version. For the most part your team take's good shots. They only rarely drive for a lay up with 4 people on them now. When your on fire or heating up they feed you the ball almost every drive as well. You get minutes much quicker than in previous versions. It took under 10 games to become 6th man. You get dynamic goals more often in NBA 2k14 as well. I've been getting around 2 per game. The sound track is one of the better one's in years. A lot of the music fits more towards the basketball theme like' Drake's started from the bottom or Macklemore's Can't Hold Us. Overall it is fun despite the frustrations. But definitely not worth 60 bucks. Either wait for next year's to come out and get this cheap or rent it with Gamefly unless your a die hard basketball fan.
Finally, don't make a center or power forward, for some reason its damn near impossible to rebound consistently in this version compared to any of the previous ones. You guy either jumps in some abstract direction instead of vertically or when he does jump up you get half a foot in the air and get out rebounded by guards even when your vertical is maxed. They also changed the way jumping works as it isn't when you hit the button it's after you bend your knees and do some huge slow jump motion that gives you zero height or distance.