NBA 2K16: Roundup of Expert Reviews From Around the Web

With a total of 10 critic reviews, NBA 2K16 had a sparkling 86 Metacritic score. To put that into the proper perspective, only three other games available for PlayStation 4 rated higher.  

I liked the game even more than most, as I rated it a 9.5 out of 10. Here's a look at the scores from five prominent publications who have evaluated the game.

Publication	Reviewer	Score
GamesVillage.it	Davide Mancini	9.4
GamesRadar	Rich Grisham	4.5 out of 5
Playstation Lifestyle	Tyler Treese	8.5
IGN Spain	Jose L. Ortega	9
Hardcore Gamer	Matt Whittaker	3.5 out of 5

The highest score on Metacritic came from Davide Mancini of GamesVillage.it (in Italian). He gave it a 9.4. Mancini wrote (via Metacritic's translation): "NBA 2K16 is, simply put, the best basketball game of the year. Spike Lee aside, the game is simply huge, full of new features and incredibly fun to play."

This was clearly a ringing endorsement for the game overall, but Mancini appears to be a little less than satisfied with the influence of Academy Award-nominated director Spike Lee on the storyline aspect in MyCareer mode.

Every year the direction of the single-player campaign is one of the details fans wait to learn about before the game is released. In this year's game, Lee takes a rather heavy-handed approach, and your player's journey early on is more about watching his directed cut scenes than playing.

Things change in the second year, when there's a balance between managing off-court activities and honing your skills, but the early portions of MyCareer were the only aspects of the game I didn't like.

Rich Grisham of GamesRadar also loved NBA 2K16. He gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars. His opening assessment of the game matches my take as accurately as any review I've seen on it. Grisham wrote:

"

NBA 2K16 is what all sports games should aspire to be. Not only is it the most ambitious title of its kind—offering expansive single player, multiplayer, cooperative, offline, and online experiences—it does so in a way that simultaneously respects core basketball aficionados and casual hoops fans. While each of the deep game modes has items I can quibble with, the whole of NBA 2K16 is much greater than the sum of its parts. If—and this is a big if—its online servers manage to stay afloat, NBA 2K16 is not only the best sports game of the year, but one of the best of all time.

"

The only thing that can prevent NBA 2K16 from being the greatest sports game ever created is poor online-server performance. The game has just about everything any type of sports video game fan could ask for—minus a few small details. Quite honestly, I'm worried about NBA 2K17 because it's hard to see how much room 2K Sports has left itself to improve.

But no matter how good something is, there are always exceptions when it comes to evaluations.

Matt Whittaker of Hardcore Gamer wasn't nearly as impressed with NBA 2K16 as most were. He scored the game an eye-popping 3.5 out of 5. With all due respect to Whittaker, who penned a well-written and thorough review, it's hard to fathom how a game so stacked with features and great gameplay could be seen as somewhere close to average.

There are portions of Whittaker's review I agree with. But he's off base when it comes to the focus of the game, and he undersells many of the truly awesome features.

Whittaker wrote: "While there’s little doubt that Mr. Lee could take the material in this in-game film and turn it into something entertaining on the big screen, the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t make for a very good video game story at all."

I agree with that statement and concept—especially as it relates to a sports game—but this next theme is one of the areas where we differ in opinion.

Whittaker continued: "Even though MyCareer, which is blatantly being billed as the reason to buy this year’s version of NBA 2K, starts off on the wrong foot, there is still a great deal of agency over your MyPlayer after the conclusion of Spike Lee’s self-indulgent in-game film."

Yes, there is a lot to do after Lee's story is done, but I would strongly disagree with the notion that Livin' Da Dream is billed as "the reason" to buy NBA 2K16. With so much done to MyTeam, MyGM, MyLeague and the addition of 2K Pro-Am, this game sets out to be the title that has something for everyone.

I agree that if you're a gamer who wants to spend most of your time playing MyCareer, you may not get any enjoyment out of it until after Lee's story comes to an end. That element and a few small missing pieces are what kept NBA 2K16 from being closer to a 10 out of 10 on my scorecard.

To each his or her own. Fans should understand the preference and perspective of each reviewer before they read his or her evaluation. It makes it easier to know how much weight to put on a reviewer's opinion.

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IGN Spain review

PlayStation Lifestyle review

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