It is not very often I get to say this, but I get to review a sports game of a sport I can actually play.  Gym class for me most of the time was either getting to play Wii Tennis, Bowling, or Baseball on one of those smartboard-projector things schools have nowadays. The only other option was being able to just do free throws/half-court shots with the assistant teacher. It might be annoying to some, but this is my only experience with the sport in terms of active participation. I’d never been too interested in watching the NBA or WNBA until recently for research purposes if I’m honest.

All of this made getting into NBA 2K22 quite challenging when the game rather unceremoniously doesn’t tell you anything. At least with the WWE 2K range, you are given on-screen prompts, or you can button mash. For NFL games, they keep things considerably more intuitive. NBA 2K22 is a little more complex if you’ve never played the series before, and it lacks the typical step-by-step “here are the basics” tools. Instead, you have a practice mode tucked away in a menu. Even then, what it does have still feels overly complex for something that should be able to tell you simply how to play.

Generally, it felt like a system that didn’t care if you felt left behind, you just had to grit your teeth and get through it. Which is something I could also say for the copious amount of ads for real-world things like Jake from State Farm, or in-game segments such as the loot boxes/player pack business in the MyTeam mode. The former comes in the style of the MyCareer mode, which had recently been memed to asphodel and back. The latter is a game mode built for you (as an NBA fan) to combine not only the greatest players of the current era of Basketball but long-gone stars too. Both are fairly microtransaction-heavy hellscapes.

What I think bothered me the most beyond the microtransactions in the two main modes, was just how lazy the game is at getting you acclimatized to what it is. To some, this would be like saying Minecraft needs a tutorial. I get that, but Basketball is hardly a cultural touchstone outside of the US, Russia, and China. Everyone else mostly ignores it beyond high school gym class. More importantly, something like FIFA is a game you can get by on knowing three buttons and moving with the stick. Basketball, on the other hand, is more complex. To those who might not religiously watch it, fouls are an unknown, what you can and can’t do is an unknown, and generally the excitement is something you need to learn.

What makes the NBA fun, frantic, and something to cheer about is the speed, the accuracy, and the wherewithal in that chaos. This was something I needed to desperately get ahold of to understand the game, which is hard to do when you don’t know how to avoid the bounty of fouls you keep incurring every few seconds. Fouls slow the game down to a crawl, as American pomp and circumstance happen. In that, frustration is compounded by becoming the mop for which the other team often uses to buff the court. So no, it is not good at teaching you about itself, but is it a fun game once you get there? Kind of.

The aforementioned player-packs from the MyTeam mode ruin any kind of fun you might be having unless you get very excited by slow animations and load times. Say you start the game as I did, and you have several packs to open up. That can take a good 5-10 minutes of uninteresting animations with lots of flair and pomp added for very little reason other than to make you want to get more of those packs. Get more to see that “satisfying” animation that is aimed at making you feel good, so you spend more money on the game and TakeTwo executives get to buy another yacht. It is a spell that doesn’t work on me for my lack of knowledge of Basketball and my disinterest in plain-faced gambling mechanics.

It is also arguably designed (in terms of UI) to confuse those such as myself to not actually play the game. Within MyTeam or MyCareer, there is a plethora of nonsense that has nothing to do with playing a game of basketball. MyCareer is something I can understand as you are of sorts playing an RPG of a young man’s career in the NBA. It is just a shame it is one of those MMORPGs that aren’t satisfying to humans who have things to do, like housework or playing more interesting games. The entire ship aspect, for which it is aimed at being a party boat of Basketball, is nothing more than set dressing for an MMORPG.

“Can you actually talk about the gameplay?” Well, I can only assume that it is more of what you’ve probably played many years before. I asked those I know who did enjoy at least one of the games, and as I described it, we got the same thing. Hold X/square to shoot, hold LT/L2 to play defensively, RT/R2 is run, A/X is pass, and everything else is a stinky pile of poo. In the meager attempt to teach you, there is a more advanced way of playing with the right analog stick. I would say that it “goes down about as well as ships named Titanic,” but the point was that that ship did go down a bit too easily. This analog stick business, it doesn’t work so well. Leave the camera stick alone!

I do think the regular 5-5 game is a little cluttered at times, as I’ve been caught up on other players milling about. Though, equally, I think the Blacktop version which is just the Basketball version of FIFA Street or the NFL’s The Yard, is a smaller pick-up style game that doesn’t allow for enough coverage of the court. I know, I am a pedant, but this is why I said NBA 2K22 does such a poor job at teaching you how to play properly, or at least how it wants you to play. There were times I was completely dumbfounded by the lack of coverage of the court by AI, which allowed far too many points. However, the best way I discovered to counter that was to just about play every single player all the time at an extreme speed.

I want to say I enjoyed the actual gameplay when I wasn’t being left behind, but I honestly don’t know. I don’t know if it was because I was finally keeping up and understanding things enough to win, or if it was proper enjoyment because it is of quality. The entire presentation is a little frustrating, over-reliant on stopping and starting so some women and children can dance about for a minute. Ok, joking aside, I do think NBA 2K22 has moments of fun and it sometimes makes me want to play it. I just don’t know if that’s because I want to prove to myself “no, you do know how to play this.” or not.

Ultimately, I think if you are a fan or someone that has grown up with knowledge around Basketball that is greater than one film with Bugs Bunny and every piece of American media the mentions it, you’ll just get it. You’ll enjoy the bits that are actually a game and not something built to pilfer money from your wallet with gambling mechanics, but you’ll enjoy it nonetheless. Everyone else will be confused by just how alien it all is. The point, once again, is that frantic fun energy and being able to shoot accurately, but every now and then you’ll be forced to stop for fouls you might not understand why you are incurring them and time-outs. All of which is slowing the pace down.

An Xbox One copy of NBA 2K22 was provided by 2K Sports for the purposes of this review.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

NBA 2K22

$59.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Fun and frantic play.
• The fantasy team section of MyTeam.

Cons

• Why so much product placement?
• Awful tutorialization.
• Gross monetization.