Review: Spike’s got no game, but ‘NBA 2K16’ has plenty

Spike Lee should do the right thing and stay away from video games.

Not that I have anything against the diminutive director. He’s made some incredible films. He’s a ballsy, loudmouthed Knicks die-hard. He helped Michael Jordan sell shoes. I am a fan.

But having slogged through Mr. Lee’s rough take on a video game Career mode in the otherwise excellent NBA 2K16, I’m ready for him to go back to jawing at real-world refs. Leave the video games alone, please.

Especially this one. The NBA 2K series has been the best basketball sim on the planet for years now, and somehow, the developers at Visual Concepts keep finding ways to top themselves. For the most part, NBA 2K16 is another incremental improvement over last year’s game. It’s prettier, has better handles, and somehow makes the world’s most realistic sports game even more realistic.

But before you get to the good stuff, you’ll probably hop right into MyCareer mode. It’s the best mode in the game — it has been for ages — though this time, it’s been co-opted by Spike Lee. And it’s worse off for it.

The first six hours of MyCareer mode is called “Livin’ Da Dream: A Spike Lee Joint,” ostensibly an extended setup for the game’s real Career mode, informally called “Everything After That Crappy Spike Lee Thing.” While in previous games you would create your own player and interact with pros and NBA owners almost from the outset, here you play as — I am not making this up — “Frequency Vibrations,” an up-and-coming baller from Harlem. People call you “Freq” for short (FREAK, GET IT?). A cast of real-world actors plays your family, including your twin sister, your girlfriend, and your troublemaking buddy.

None of them can shut up. The mode takes you from your high school days through your first season as an NBA rookie, but you only spend about one-sixth of this actually playing a video game. The rest of the time, you are watching a cheesy Lifetime movie play out on your console, occasionally pressing buttons to skip sequences when the dialogue becomes too unbearable.

And you’ll want to do that constantly. While the actors put in decent performances, the entire set up — kid from the projects hits the big time, lots of pressure, troubled friends, etc. — is predictable and uninteresting. Worse, you have zero control over how it plays out. Other than choosing from a handful of colleges, it’s all pre-planned. Play it six times (note: do not do this) and you’ll meet the same irritating Italian stereotype of an agent, date the same mildly uninterested woman, and get lectured by the same wildly aggressive NBA team owner. NBA 2K16’s MyCareer is an arranged marriage between the player and Spike Lee, and the only way out is to leave him at the altar for a different game mode.

It’s baffling. MyCareer hasn’t just been a staple of the NBA 2K series, it’s been the game’s calling card. Handing the reins to anyone outside of developer Visual Concepts’ internal stable was a risky move, but you’d think someone as well-versed in both basketball and directing as Spike Lee would be up to the task.

He wasn’t. I can’t tell you what went wrong here, but it probably boils down to 2K giving far too much creative control to Lee, who, at the end of the interminable “Livin Da Dream” segment, admits that this was his first kick at video games and that he had a really good time. Glad someone had fun.

The silver lining to this fiasco is that once you get through Spike’s six-hour nightmare, MyCareer suddenly becomes the dream it purports to be. You can tweak your player’s stats, juggle off-day responsibilities like practice, endorsements, and social time to build team chemistry, and generally live the virtual basketball life you wanted to live before Spike Lee came in and wrote it all out for you. It’s addictive watching your player slowly climb the depth chart to get more court time, improve his stroke, and eventually start making All-Star teams.

It’s fun helping him do all of this because NBA 2K16 still plays great. They’ve tweaked the controls again, this time to emphasize the passing game. Dedicated buttons for lob and bounce passes make tossing assists easier than ever, especially when coupled with the ability to call a pick using another button. Phil Jackson might lament the NBA’s over-reliance on the high screen and roll, but it works, and it works well in NBA 2K16.

You’ll need those crisp passes to penetrate the tricky defenses. The AI is impressive; teams will not only play the way they should (ie. Golden State plays a flowing, open style, while Memphis plays tighter man to man), but they’ll learn your tendencies and shut you down if you keep trying the same game-breaking moves. It’s challenging but rarely frustrating.

And of course it all looks terrific. The attention to detail is magnificent, from the wealth of new incidental animations to the photo-realistic faces. They’ve fully integrated the TNT "Inside the NBA" crew as well, adding an inexhaustible amount of entertaining commentary from Ernie, Kenny, and Shaq. NBA 2K is so far ahead of the competition here— and by competition, I don’t just mean NBA Live 16, I mean every other sports game — it’s almost unfair.

One exception? You.

Like last year, you can import your face into NBA 2K16 using a Playstation or Kinect camera. And like last year, it often leads to, well, horror. Here’s my first pass at a facial scan (the game told me this was “average”):

It eventually got better, but even when I finally got a ballpark likeness, the game couldn’t handle the lips. Here’s my weird, upper-lipless dude looking suspiciously like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. All that’s missing is a plate of Wensleydale cheese.

It’s easy to forgive these tech foibles, however, when you consider the unbelievable depth of this game. Tire of MyCareer and you can take a team through a Season, or play GM and manage the entire organization. New features here include the ability to pick up and move your team to a different city, which should please Seattlites itching to get back at Oklahoma City for stealing the Sonics years ago.

You can take it online, too. The 2K Pro-Am randomly pairs up teams up 5 for some pick up, and unlike last year’s disastrous online efforts, it mostly works. Sadly, 2K continues to tie the game’s virtual currency (imaginatively named “Virtual Currency”) to your online connection. Lose your Internet and you can’t acquire or spend your in-game cash. It’s stupid. It’s also earned at a profoundly slow rate, which is 2K’s way of encouraging you to drop real coin for some fake coin. I'm not a fan of this business, but you can always just play matches with friends and ignore all the Virtual Currency stuff anyway.

NBA 2K16 is the first time in quite a while I’ve seen the franchise make a serious misstep. Though there’s more than enough NBA goodness here to justify another courtside seat, the disappointing MyCareer mode is impossible to ignore. Hopefully 2K will find a way to right the ship and return MyCareer to its former glory, or at least thank Spike Lee for his services and immediately lose his phone number.

What’s Hot: Incredible depth; looks and sound great; smart changes to passing and defensive A.I.

What’s Not: Spike Lee and (sigh) Frequency Vibrations; still ties offline currency to online servers; facial recognition makes you look like The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Platform reviewed: PS4

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