I want to start this review with two moments in NBA 2K22 that perfectly exemplify one of the biggest problems that has been dragging the saga for a few years now, and that in this year’s version are aggravated to levels never seen before. The first is a bit absurd, but it demonstrates quite well the disconnection that the franchise, one of the most important when it comes to representing any sport on console, is beginning to have with the reality of the NBA: at a certain point, in My Career mode – which will be, in the end, the great target of my criticism -, complaints against our player begin to emerge because, according to some critics and journalists of those who roam the NBA courts, the mere fact of having a Youtube channel can be an obstacle to develop our skills to 100%, and no self-respecting elite athlete has anything that resembles it.

Before commenting on the second, let’s dwell on this statement: a game that prides itself on being up to date, on going beyond just reproducing what you see on the field, makes one of the most unfortunate statements I’ve seen myself in a long time, going so far as to quote Lebron James – a personality who has collaborated on shows and has been more active than anyone else on social media – as someone who would never do that to get to the top. It’s a level of clumsiness unbecoming of the folks at Visual Concepts: the studio that prides itself on translating the street and stadium experience to the small screen here ignores a reality in which the likes of Jimmy Butler or Serge Ibaka enjoy YouTube channels with some success, with the sole excuse of creating a narrative that allows them to generate conflict within our development as a player.

But the thing goes further with my second moment, when we land for the first time in the City, an element introduced last year replacing the Neighborhood, and we see the best unintentional parody of gentrification that has ever been in a video game. The amalgam of lights, colors and branding that replaces the purity of concrete courts and kids with boomboxes is itself the embodiment of all the ills that afflict NBA 2K22: a game, now yes, that once again more than proves why fans consider it the best possible representation of a sport, but further exacerbates the huge rift between the games themselves and everything surrounding them, to the point where it’s almost impossible to justify.

If we stick to the good stuff, mainly focused on the game part, there are certain changes that even to people less versed in the saga will seem obvious. NBA 2K22 MT coins leave behind the excessive dependence on the figures of the team and statistics and focuses everything on team play, using two new features: the first is an improvement in defense systems, which makes us have to plan each play better and move the ball more than before to not eat a cap; and the second is the change in the shooting system, which now depends more for the success of both fatigue and how well covered we are.

This, which may sound minor, has a huge effect on the court. The games are no longer the ataño correcalles, nor a constant me against the world where if you have a Curry, a James or a Harden the thing is simplified. Now, knowing how to weave a good play and see the gaps in the defense is critical, I’d say more than ever, and while you’ll have to take my word for it more than what you’ll see in any video, it’s perhaps one of the most noticeable changes in style of play I can remember in the franchise in recent years.

Perhaps that’s why I’m even more annoyed by the separation between this, which borders on almost unmitigated excellence, and all the clunkiness and absurd additions that surround it. NBA 2K22 insists on all the things that have long been criticized, such as excessive monetization for a paid game, constant sponsorships on screen or excessive interest in a MyTeam mode that tries to do the same as its FIFA counterpart, the Ultimate Team of the chromitos, to try to scratch even more our wallets. But, where there used to be a certain elegance, a certain know-how in how to walk the fine line between interest and boredom; now it all seems much more clumsy and tawdry.

Hence I mentioned earlier the My Career mode, which should be the quintessential single-player mode and here is something that seems, with apologies to the programmers who surely have spent a lot of time and effort on it, made without a clear idea of how to run it. This hodgepodge of brands, missions and a bunch of NPCs contradicts the idea of bringing the NBA experience to the new generation, with dreadful loading times, a series of frankly ridiculous and unrealistic moments for a story that is supposed to be about overcoming – going from being a nobody to a star in the best league in the world, no less – and graphics almost unworthy of the 21st century.

This mode, and many other details, such as the apathetic commentary of Daimiel and Sixto, or the clear absence of commentary in Spanish for certain games or game modes – such as the WNBA, which again, must be applauded in terms of how it is represented – end up leaving us with the impression of being in front of a cheap NBA 2K MT, something that a title of these characteristics and with this level of detail and budget should never be able to afford. In the end, it’s as if the people at 2K and Visual Concepts had taken a basketball game and, after elevating it to the altars of its genre, decided to create a separate game with other, slightly related ideas. The result is as expected: an excellent game, more than ever, in the basics; to which you have to be constantly forgiving the little messes that is letting us loose in our way.

In my conclusions of the last NBA 2K I reviewed in this house, NBA 2K19, I said in reference to what at the time was a suffocating set of micropayments that “with so many distractions around it is worth asking where we draw the line between harmless fiction and harsh reality”. NBA 2K22 continues that line, but presents us with both reality, in the form of incredibly rendered games that are more accurate than ever, and fiction, with a fantasy world where Jake from State Farm or the Adidas representative is as important a figure as your coach. Choosing which side the game falls on this time around is still up to the player, and there’s every reason to praise it; but if we’re going to continue this trend until it breaks the rope, one can at least hope that the execution lives up to its legacy. And this year, even if it hurts, the separation between the undeniably good and the embarrassingly poor is too short to continue to ignore it.