NBA 2K20 fans have long been critical of the Career Mode. In this game mode, you take on the role of a player entering the NBA. From year to year, it varies as to how you make it to the league. For one year, you came in as a college superstar. Another year, you started off in the Chinese professional basketball scene and moved over to the United States after killing it overseas. The stories vary, but one thing is for sure: fans usually hate it.

The NBA 2K20 Career Mode is always an issue for fans for two major reasons. One, microtransactions allow those who spend money to reach the higher overall ratings on different attributes faster. Second, the cutscenes are usually long, poorly written, and useless.

This year, LeBron James produced the story, and a lot of actors are on board as in-game roles. Idris Elba, for example, plays your coach, with Thomas Middleditch and Rosario Dawson playing roles as well. The issue with this game mode for me has long been the inability to play offline, but that’s something that 2K has shown no interest in changing. For the record, if your Wi-Fi cuts out mid-game, you lose all progress and can’t restart until you’re back online.

Two weeks before launch, 2K released a free demo for fans of the series to test out the new MyPLAYER Builder. It’s meant to be a better way of making characters for your Career Mode experience and while I haven’t checked it out yet, it looks promising. The demo also allows players to experiment with multiple MyPLAYER builds before the full game officially tips off, in hopes that they’ll find a build that works best for them come release date.

NBA 2K20 is hugely popular, and also heavily criticized. Here’s to hoping an improved Career Mode and the MyPLAYER system makes the whole experience much more enjoyable. The game releases for Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One on September 6th.

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