Gfk Chart-Track’s latest UK sales charts for the week ending September 29th are now available. To no one’s surprise, EA’s FIFA 19 has debuted in first place, and has already become the biggest title in the UK for this year. What is surprising is how first week physical sales are down 25 percent compared to FIFA 18 from last year.

The possible explanation is that more consumers have shifted to digital downloads more than expected. Digital sales are not counted in Gfk’s estimates. Then again, it’s also just likely that FIFA 19 sold worse than FIFA 18. In terms of sales breakup per platform, the PS4 version made up 64 percent of sales. Xbox One took up 35 percent, while the Nintendo Switch version accounted for 1 percent.

Insomniac’s Spider-Man has dropped to second place, but it’s already surpassed Far Cry 5 as the second best-selling title of the year. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is also doing fairly well. Though it started slow in its first week, sales are looking decent as the title drops slightly to third place.

Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy fell slightly to fourth place, followed by Grand Theft Auto 5, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Elder Scrolls Online, and NBA 2K18. Other notable new releases for this week included Valkyria Chronicles 4. It debuted at ninth place, with 54 percent of sales for the PS4 version. The Nintendo Switch followed up with 39 percent of sales while Xbox One accounted for 7 percent. Minecraft: Xbox One Edition rounded out the charts at tenth place.

2K and Visual Concepts’ NBA 2K series has continued to grow in esteem and popularity over the last few years. A lot of this has to do with it being the only well playing basketball game on the market (at least with official licenses), but a lot of that is also owed to the games innovating with mechanics and modes with each iteration, which has made each year’s entry a safe bet for fans.

All of this has culminated in NBA 2K18, last year’s entry in the long running series, crossing 10 million units sold worldwide, also becoming the first game in the series to do so, and, naturally, the highest selling game in the franchise- in spite of the controversy that surrounded the game’s implementation of microtransactions. 2K Sports’ parent company 2K announced the sales figures as part of their financial results later today, also announcing that sales of the series are now at 80 million units lifetime.

NBA 2K18 was doubtless helped by the fact that it launched for literally everything last year- PS4, Xbox One, and PC, yes, but also Nintendo Switch, as well as Xbox 360 and PS3. Presumably, when NBA 2K19 also launches on all those platforms later this year, it will repeat the feat.

Nintendo has managed to get some surprising third parties on board with the Switch, but the most surprising of these are probably The Elder Scrolls publishers Bethesda, and GTA parent company Take Two. Take Two has actually been a surprising proponent of the platform, putting out NBA 2K18 and WWE 2K18 on it last year, and also putting out LA Noire, plus NBA 2K19 being announced for it too (and Carnival Games…).

But it is entirely possible that future support for the Switch might not be as rosy, depending on how those games did. Nintendo fans are all too familiar, after all, with third parties bailing on their platform after citing less than satisfactory sales, right?

However, they don’t need to worry about that. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two CEO Straus Zelnick said, “What we’ve put out so far [on the Switch] has been successful”, also explicitly promising that more games from the publishing giant are coming to Nintendo’s hybrid.

You know what would be great, Take Two? No, I’m not going to ask for GTA 5 like everyone else does, I don’t actually care as much for that. But put out XCOM on Switch. Or Civilization. One or the other. Or both. I’d really like that. They’re already on iPad, so it can’t be that hard.

During Take-Two’s recent quarterly investor conference call, the company discussed their views on microtransactions, game quality and more. The company also discussed their success in engaging many players with their video games, and how such engagement is always the top priority when making games.

Chief Executive Officer Strauss Zelnick stated that the company is “focused on players, not payers.”  He also opined that as long as companies put out quality content, then consumers will gladly fund this content due to the return of a “massive number of hours that one can spend enjoying the titles.”

Amidst all the recent controversy regarding microtransactions, Take-Two discussed their own policy (regarding the issue related to NBA 2K18) is just to “captivate and engage consumers” and keep them satisfied,which in turn leads to  “really great results”.

Take-Two remains committed to “never, ever rest on the past, and is utterly focused on innovation and breaking barriers, with an eye towards an amazing entertainment experience.” We’ll have  to wait and see how this year goes for the Take-Two and all of the games they’re involved with.

Lawbreakers

In a way, you have to feel bad for Lawbreakers. This was Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski’s return to the games industry after a long sabbatical. It was supposed to be the perfect union of hero shooter and arena shooter. Sadly, Lawbreakers was handicapped out of the gate with a market dominated by Overwatch. The actual game had a paucity of content with poor matchmaking and weird balance issues. Of course, the high skill ceiling, lack of personality to its heroes and outright lameness didn’t help either.

Star Wars Battlefront 2

On the surface, it seemed like Electronic Arts had learned its lesson with the first Star Wars Battlefront. People don’t like expansion passes? They’re gone! People want a campaign? They get it and you get to play as the Empire! More maps, proper class loadouts, space battles – it almost seemed like a dream come true. Of course, in true EA fashion, it turned into a nightmare. The campaign was barely worth experiencing. The game’s loot boxes completely ruined progression, leaving the min-maxing of loadouts to random luck of the draw.

Friday The 13th: The Video Game

Friday The 13^th: The Video Game suffered from many of the same expectations as Star Wars Battlefront but on a smaller scale. It was the first time we’d get to properly play as Jason Voorhees. With an asymmetrical multiplayer approach, everything seemed like it was on track even with some delays. Sadly, the actual game was riddled with bugs and server issues that made it nigh unplayable at launch. Though such issues were resolved later, Friday The 13^th: The Video Game was still just a fairly okay game and not the murder-a-thon we expected.

Mass Effect Andromeda

Mass Effect Andromeda was doomed from the EA Access trial with horrible facial animations, poorly written dialogue, glitches, an odd set-up and strange design choices. The full game was worse with severe performance issues, game breaking bugs and glitches, a total waste of a new setting, the squandering of any potential that the premise could have had and don’t even get us started on the co-op multiplayer mode. Mass Effect Andromeda’s combat was up to snuff but everything else makes us think that the series died just so we could have an amazing year of games. Was it worth it? Hmm.

Marvel vs Capcom Infinite

A hilariously bad story mode, low-rent roster, lack of additional features, idiotic new mechanics and terrible graphics – at this rate, you’d wonder why we had any expectations from Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. Well, this was the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and to a series that we thought was generally dead and gone. To think that we went from “Take you for a ride!” to this nonsense is just sad.

Need for Speed: Payback

Electronic Arts just couldn’t catch a break in 2017. It’s not like we had too much to hope for Need for Speed Payback until its reveal. Over the months, we thought its open world approach, introduction of Heists and three playable characters might finally offer something cool. Expectations were tempered to say the least. Unfortunately, as with Star Wars Battlefront 2, EA ruined it with Speed Cards that could be earned either in-game or with microtransactions. Again, it’s not like the game is suddenly better without microtransactions – customizing your vehicle this way is simply asinine and completely up to RNG. The story was horrendous, the open world didn’t offer much by way of fulfilling gameplay and for an industry that needs microtransactions to fund triple A development, Payback didn’t look particularly good either.

Sonic Forces

When Sonic Forces was first announced, there was cautious optimism. A sequel to Sonic Generations with some kind of war setting? Hurray-ish. Then it was revealed that Sonic would be working alongside all his critter friends. Then all his past enemies appeared as well. And for some reason, Sega thought to throw a customizable avatar. All these bells and whistles aside, Sonic Forces takes everything Generations did right with its gameplay and messes it up. Present Sonic is meh and the Avatar levels are boring. The experience is underwhelming at best and disappointingly idiotic at worst.

NBA 2K18

NBA 2K titles used to walk a fine line between love and hate. Virtual Currency has been an epidemic for a while but the games were generally well built on the basis of their gameplay and campaign. NBA 2K18 looked like it would be even better with its Playgrounds and Career mode and whatnot. Then, like most everything else this year, it was ruined with microtransactions. Customization options are severely gated by Virtual Currency and the game would reward very little of it, pushing you towards microtransactions even more. What could have been a great game is ultimately a decent one that demands way too much money from you past the initial $60.

WWE 2K18

Visual Concepts and Yuke’s haven’t really given us much in terms of quality wrestling for the past few years but past WWE 2K games were at least somewhat decent. WWE 2K18 beats that streak, mixing in a number of amazingly stupid glitches along with a nonsensical MyCareer mode. Though the loot boxes included aren’t purchased with real money, they still severely limit customization and lean towards RNG luck than any kind of actual freedom. This year’s iteration is the best-looking yet but that can only get you so far when everything else is so fundamentally bad.

Styx: Shards of Darkness

Styx: Master of Shadows wasn’t exactly the next Assassin’s Creed (which doesn’t mean much since the current Assassin’s Creed is so different). However, it offered a nice little offbeat fantasy stealth adventure that players could sink their teeth into. Styx: Shards of Darkness sadly failed to build on that. Level design was better this time around but instead of paying homage to the old-school while streamlining gameplay elements, the game stubbornly stuck to it. Stealth is very easy to cheese, which makes you wonder what the point even is and the humour just doesn’t click.

Winner: Star Wars Battlefront 2

It started with the realization that Star Cards could upset the balance of gameplay in multiplayer. Fans were irate that a $60 release introduced pay to win elements. Naturally, DICE responded and promised changes. However, once Star Wars Battlefront 2 hit the early trial stage, the costs of various heroes proved to be the tipping point. The “sense of pride and accomplishment” comment by EA’s community management team became the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. It eventually snowballed into microtransactions being removed and EA experiencing severe falls in its stock prices.

But that’s not what made Star Wars Battlefront 2 a disappointment. It’s the fact that the campaign is a few hours long and fails to deliver on its promise of an Empire state of view. It’s the fact that the multiplayer would suffer severe rubber banding and latency issues, making matches unplayable. It’s the fact that progression makes no sense and is so heavily gated by randomness that you’ll probably never get rewards for the classes you enjoy the most.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is the most disappointing game of 2017 because EA took what should have been a winner with its graphics, presentation and sound design and utterly ruined it out of pure greed. That it accomplished this even after Star Wars Battlefront (2015) was so heavily panned is remarkably sad.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

It’s sickening, and there is no defense possible for the kind of abusive practices that are best characterized by a game like Star Wars Battlefront 2, currently caught in the midst of a backlash thanks to its egregious monetization (although EA and DICE have currently paused microtransactions for now). This is, truly, the end game of western AAA that Nintendo tried to warn against years ago- more sophisticated hardware, a never ending arms race for better looking and more technically sophisticated games, rising costs, studio closures, publisher buyouts, games bombing even after selling millions, and a race to the bottom in trying to monetize a userbase.

"There is no defense possible for the kind of abusive practices that are best characterized by a game like Star Wars Battlefront 2, currently caught in the midst of a backlash thanks to its egregious monetization."

But look, I can almost understand why publishers are doing what they are doing- games are getting more and more expensive to make as time goes on, and the user base they sell to is not expanding linearly with their costs. Unless users are happy with mid tier AA games like Persona 5 and NieR Automata (which, by the way, I am- they are among the two best games of this year; the problem is, most of the larger audience wouldn’t be happy with anything less than the latest graphics telling an ‘epic’ story), this arms race is not going to end.

What do publishers do, then? Of course they have no choice but to try and leverage as much revenue from the base they do have as possible, right? And hence, we get this nonsense.  But I have a compromise- a compromise for publishers. Raise the price of games. Raise it to $80.

Now, many of you either blanched at reading that sentence, or got really angry, or closed this article in disgust. If you’re still reading, let me explain- video games have cost $60 since 2005 now, when the Xbox 360 first came on to the scene. Development costs have risen exponentially since, and this is without factoring in inflation over the last 12 years. Put simply, we are paying far less relative to purchasing parity and development costs now than we ever have before. We are ignoring the average rate of inflation (which has been roughly 2.4% on average annually in the US for the last ten years), and not accounting for how steeply costs have risen with the advent of the HD consoles- of course it’s financially unviable for developers to sell a game at $60 and leave it at that. Right?

"Video games have cost $60 since 2005 now, when the Xbox 360 first came on to the scene. Development costs have risen exponentially since, and this is without factoring in inflation over the last 12 years."

Okay, so raise the cost to $80. Do it- but that comes with the understanding that if these publishers do, they will not shoehorn any of your other bullshit into the game. No microtransactions, no lootboxes, no car passes, online passes, piecemeal DLC, none of that. Feel free to sell expansions and content packs if they want to- but no more nickel and diming, no more exploiting their consumers, no more taking us for a ride, no more devaluing their own game and the work of their developers. We pay them $80, once- and that extra $20 you get per copy is an insurance we pay to ensure that they don’t continue to ruin our games.

What do publishers get out of this? Why would they go for a one time cost (admittedly an increased one) rather than recurrent purchasing and revenue? Because my belief truly is that it will balance out for them in the end. Look, by charging $80 upfront, they get an extra $20 from everyone who buys the game- rather than getting $60 from everyone who buys the game, and then $30 for the Season Pass from a fraction of that userbase (or recurrent spending on microtransactions from an even smaller pool of the people who bought the game). Recurrent spending spreads out the revenues over time, sure- so more stability in income in terms of your financial statements. But in the end, by ensuring an additional $20 from every purchaser, you are still in the end getting the same amount of money (just upfront). Hell, since they are getting an extra $20 from everyone who buys the game, they might even earn more in the end. There- there’s the benefit for them.

It’s not just that, either- they avoid the intangibles this way, too. No bad PR, no backlash, no negative publicity, no disenchanted developers, no brand devaluation. And if this leads to a net increase in their total revenues (which, maybe? It’s unclear if it might), then maybe they even feel bolder in terms of making less homogenized games, trying out different things, not just putting a different variation of the same thing to the market once a year, every year.

"Those additional $20 per game will sting- but think of them as an insurance policy we pay to ensure that the specter of abusive monetization is kept away from our games forever."

Now, to be very clear, I am not asking for every game to be $80- only the ones that feel it necessary to nickel and dime a customer to achieve profitability and growth. If your game is so expensive that you don’t see how it will make money without you shoehorning in microtransactions and lootboxes or exploitative season passes- well, don’t. Charge $80 once, and be done with it. Games that right now can afford to be single player titles without inane monetization policies, like Wolfenstein, The Evil Within, Prey, Persona 5, and NieR Automata– these titles, too, should remain $60. If they can be profitable at $60 now, they will have no problem being profitable at $60 then (and, in fact, by being at a slightly lower price point, they will even induce people to pick them up by looking better value in comparison to $80 games).

I also don’t want this to mean the end of meaningful post launch add-on content- if The Witcher 3 charges me $80, I don’t want it to mean CDPR can’t sell an Expansion Pass with Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone additionally, because that is meaningful add-on content that earns the extra money (after the base game has already earned the $80 to begin with). Ditto for Horizon or Mario Kart, which both have had great post launch DLC support, too.

But that’s as much leeway as I am willing to give. So, publishers- here’s a compromise. Stop ruining our games (and the games your developers spend years of their lives working on). Stop nickel and diming your customers. Stop feeding the spiral that will inevitably lead to a crash of the AAA market. Just stop- instead, charge us $80 per game, once, upfront. There- you made your extra money honestly, without having to resort to scam your players. As for us, the players, the people who play games? Those additional $20 per game will sting- but think of them as an insurance policy we pay to ensure that the specter of abusive monetization is kept away from our games forever.

It’s not a win-win situation- but it’s the only fix to this goddamn mess that I can see for the time being.

Even with all the controversy surrounding its microtransactions, Visual Concepts’ NBA 2K18 was a success for publishing label 2K Games and publisher Take Two Interactive. In the latter’s Q2 FY 18 earnings call (transcript via SeekingAlpha), CEO Strauss Zelnick revealed that NBA 2K18 had sold in more than six million units since launching in September.

The titles sell-in and sell-through were also up by over 20 percent from last year’s release and there was a “significant increase in digitally-delivered sales.” NBA 2K18 also marked the first time the series came to Nintendo Switch and Zelnick noted that the company was “very pleased with the title’s performance on this new platform.”

Zelnick anticipates strong demand on all platforms as the Holiday season arrives and says that the NBA 2K series benefits from “increasing engagement and recurrent consumer spending.” You can check out our review of NBA 2K18 here to decide if it’s worth your while. Despite the game’s heavy focus on micro-transactions for so many aspects, it does introduce some nice new features like the fully interactive Neighborhood that served as a hub for numerous modes.

The NPD Group finally released its sales report for September 2017, indicating which titles sold the best in the United States. Overall spending in the region during September was $744 million which is a 49 percent increase year over year.

Though there have been concerns about its sales performance in the first month compared to Destiny 2, the sequel had the strongest first month spend of any game this year, surpassing Ghost Recon: Wildlands and becoming the best-selling title of 2017. It’s only the third best-selling title of the past 12 months though with Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1 ahead of it.

The total revenue for Bungie’s shared world shooter, from both physical and digital sales, was described as stronger than Destiny in its first month. Keep in mind that this is despite the group not keeping track of digital sales in its chart rankings.

As for NBA 2K18, despite all the controversy, it was second in sales and is now the highest selling sports title of the year. It also had the “largest consumer spend in launch month of any sports genre title” since the PS4 and Xbox One launched, which is no small matter.

The top 20 best-selling games across all platforms (the asterisk denotes games where digital sales are not included) in September 2017 can be seen below:

• Destiny 2*
• NBA 2K18
• Madden NFL 18
• FIFA 18
• Mario & Rabbids: Kingdom Battle*
• Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite
• Grand Theft Auto V
• NHL 18
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
• Rainbow Six Siege
• Mario Kart 8*
• Metroid: Samus Returns*
• Pokken Tournament*
• Overwatch*
• Ark: Survival Evolved*
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
• NBA Live 18
• Splatoon 2*
• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
• Minecraft

For the last many years, the NBA 2K series is the place to play if you are a hardcore basketball fan. With each iteration, Visual Concepts have pushed the visual boundaries whilst delivering slick gameplay at 60 frames per second. NBA 2K18 is no different and it’s perhaps the best looking game in the series.

One of the most striking features of NBA 2K18 lies in its presentation and creating an atmosphere that is eerily close to the real thing. Whether it be the crowd cheering or the amazing commentary at display, the game excels in delivering a fantastic basketball experience. Character models and body animations, for the most part, look great. The gameplay feels really smooth with special care given to the way players pass the ball and score their shots. Tress effects and high quality skin shaders are used aplenty, along with dynamic sweating and cloth simulation. Player movement look authentic, however sometimes it feels like they are sliding along the court instead of lifting their feet. This isn’t a noticeable issue but it’s jarring nonetheless. We also noticed character clipping issues and let’s not even talk about the facial animations. Look, the facial animations aren’t that bad but at times they look like doll eyes, killing the immersion factor. And for a game that thrives on immersion, it’s slightly disappointing that Visual Concepts haven’t been able to nail this feature.

On the consoles front, we have both the base PS4 and Xbox One versions running at a native 1920 X 1080p resolution with frame rates running at a rock solid 60. During on-court gameplay, we witnessed next to no frame rate drops, however the Neighbourhood mode, which is set in a semi-open world, does struggle to maintain a higher frame rate. There isn’t much difference between the two console versions and much like every entry in the series, NBA 2K18 maintains parity in terms of texture quality, texture filtering, character models, skin shaders and post processing effects.

However, as expected, the PS4 Pro version is a different story. The PS4 Pro builds runs at a checkerboard 4K resolution along with a solid 60 frame per second. The game also benefits from improved anti-aliasing, enhanced motion blur effects and better shadow quality effects. Even the performance in the Neighbourhood mode is better.

Eventually, whatever platform you play NBA 2K18 on, a locked 60fps is given. The game plays to each platform’s strength delivering a rich basketball experience (only if you can ignore the atrocious microtransactions but this topic is for another day).

This isn’t to say that NBA 2K18 is a bad game, actually far from it. But it includes a number of questionable practices regarding microtransactions. Look, generally speaking I am fine with microtransactions as long as they add value to the game and aren’t overdone. But in case of NBA 2K18, they are so far stretched that it totally throws the balance out of the playing court. They are mostly found in the game’s MyCareer mode which involves the player character beginning at a base rating of 60. One of the goals of the MyCareer mode is to be the absolutely best player out there and the path to reach that pedestal is by increasing your skills across various categories. For starters, once you start playing with your favorite team you will be rewarded with virtual currency. These are enough to unlock some of the earlier skills, however once you look at unlocking some of the later skills, these require literally thousands of points.

"Look, generally speaking I am fine with microtransactions as long as they add value to the game and aren’t overdone. But in case of NBA 2K18, they are so far stretched that it totally throws the balance out of the playing court."

So, you are either looking at grinding through tons of matches or use microtransactions to get the number of points and increase your rating. This emphasis on microtransactions also extends to customization. If you want a particular hair style, prepare to shelve out that virtual currency. You want a shiny tattoo. Sure, kindly pay for that too. This then applies to player’s shoes, clothes and even animations. Yes, you need to have a ton of virtual currency either by grinding or by paying real money. Virtual Currency packs range from 5000 coins to 450,000 coins and this will set you back from $2 to $100. Now, Virtual Currency is not a new concept to the series. It has been here since NBA 2K13 but it’s absolutely ridiculous to see this become a kind of a forced feature in NBA 2K18, specially with all the new modes that the game includes. According to user reports, it will take over two hundred matches to achieve a player rating of mid 80s. You might want to adjust your expectations if you are aiming for that golden 99 rating should you wish to not spend your hard-earned money on microtransactions.

However, if you can look past these unwanted practices, NBA 2K18 provides a genuinely entertaining basketball experience and one of the ways it does this is through its vastly improved presentation and body animations. Top notch presentation isn’t exactly alien to this franchise (and I have praised it a lot in my NBA 2K17 review), but Visual Concepts have taken it to an altogether different level. Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett make an appearance as guest commentators while the on-field commentary team is simply exceptional and dynamic, making it perhaps the best iteration the series has seen.

You can really see that Visual Concepts are pushing the immersion factor when they include minor details such as on-site interviews and players speaking about their personal experience with playing ball. These are intricate details but they go a long way in amping up the immersion factor. However, I found the general music to be lacking this time around. Unlike, NBA 2K17, which had a certain flow to its music, I found NBA 2K18’s music to be forced in without context. It almost feels like the developers thought this particular track sounds catchy so let’s just put it in there without any context.

"Passing and dribbling feel solid whereas taking shots feel much more dynamic. Ball physics have been largely improved upon and they no longer feel like they are attached to the player hands and instead behave accordingly with the surrounding environment."

The graphics for the most part are pretty amazing and you have to look twice before realizing that the characters are just 3D models. This is backed up by some pretty amazing cloth and hair simulation, however facial animations are largely disappointing…and boy aren’t’ those doll eyes a straight rip off from your favorite horror movie. The game also suffers from clipping issues but they are not something that will detract you from the overall experience.

Gameplay wise, most of the stuff that you have seen in NBA 2K17 has made its transition quite well in NBA 2K18. Gameplay feels really smooth thanks to a solid 60 frames per second experience and fluid animations. Passing and dribbling feel solid whereas taking shots feel much more dynamic. Ball physics have been largely improved upon and they no longer feel like they are attached to the player hands and instead behave accordingly with the surrounding environment. Defense is a bit harder this time around but that is alright because it was way easier in the previous entry. So, from a purely gameplay perspective and on field game action, the series’ latest entry delivers once again.

MyGM, and MyLeague make a return in NBA 2K18 and they are largely the same except the former which allows you to take your custom character and put him in the shoes of a manager. From a top level, it feels like an extension to the MyCareer mode because MyGM takes place after your character’s career ends due to an injury. Unfortunately, MyGM falters in its presentation, the lack of voice overs and some weird dialogue choices. You will still be developing your dream team by finishing challenges but it’s largely the same experience as before except for the unwanted text based story mode that I mentioned earlier.

"The game’s microtransactions are disastrous and makes the career mode and absolute grind. Ultimately, the core of NBA 2K18’s gameplay is still intact and if you don’t mind the microtransactions in the MyCareer mode, you are going to have a blast."

NBA 2K18 also introduces Neighborhoods, a kind of a social space where you and other players hang out in a semi-open world setting. The world is filled with shops where you can buy new hair styles, tattoo, clothes…in short, this mode ties in with MyCareer, MyPark, and ProAm game modes. Unfortunately, these locations are placed at long distances from each other and it was pretty painful to walk all over again. I get what Visual Concepts are trying to do with Neighborhoods (although the idea seems to be derived from online games such as Destiny’s Tower) and I am really intrigued to see where they can take this concept in the next iteration.

In the end NBA 2K18 feels like Visual Concepts is trying too many things at once. MyGM’s story mode and Neighborhoods had great potential but what we got instead is an unpolished experience. The game’s microtransactions are disastrous and makes the career mode and absolute grind. Ultimately, the core of NBA 2K18’s gameplay is still intact and if you don’t mind the microtransactions in the MyCareer mode, you are going to have a blast.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.