The next day, your Chinese coach informs you that you’re being traded away and a cutscene later, you’re back in Los Angeles and headed to the home of the Lakers. AI thinks this is his shot to impress American scouts and the game even hands you a scripted moment where you dunk over a former college teammate, which soon becomes a viral video clip. After a few games with the Shanghai Bears, NBA 2K19’s M圜areer pits you against the NBA All-Stars as part of their global tour. That's a dangerous attitude for a rookie to have and the game’s opening hours make it all too clear. The protagonist longs to return to the NBA as soon as possible, feels short changed for the effort he puts in, and thinks he deserves better. We loved it so much that we wish EA Sports would pick up on that aspect for FIFA’s next foray with The Journey, given the game and sport's worldwide popularity, and that it’s finishing its story this year.Īdditionally, the writers of NBA 2K19 not only acknowledge the character’s flaws - instead of ignoring them as NBA 2K18 did - but they also use that to craft a sensible narrative. It really makes you feel out of place, which is most likely what 2K was going for. While you’ve a translator for the former, you just have to live with the latter. It’s a novel idea, one that’s unexpected, jarring, and even disorienting, what with the coach’s instructions and commentary all being in Mandarin. You play as a college star - nicknamed AI - who fails to be picked in an NBA Draft and then ends up in China playing for the fictional Shanghai Bears team. Thankfully, NBA 2K19 does a little more than that.įor one, the new M圜areer in NBA 2K19 has a much better story. NBA 2K set the bar so low that anything it would do next year would surpass that. It was disastrous to say the least and set a new nadir for the franchise, just two years after the heavily-restrictive storytelling of Spike Lee. This was compounded by 2K’s decision to turn player development into a money-making scheme, putting micro-transactions everywhere in a game you already paid a fair amount of money to purchase. Finally, the app will allow players to do what no other companion app for NBA allowed: Face Scanning.Last year, the NBA 2K team put out one of its worst efforts with story-based mode M圜areer, thanks to a terrible story of a former basketball hotshot returning to the sport after a short-lived career as a DJ. The former has especially been improved in certain ways like a new Invite option so friends can easily join you in your journey together.įor the Reigning Three mode, you can acquire special items that will only be exclusive to this game mode and the currency you earn from it. Other game modes like the 2v2 and Reigning Three also support similar rewards.
Now daily events allow opportunities to earn Virtual Currency which you can later use in NBA 2K19.
Any card above the top 5 is treated as substitutes. Wait for your card deck to grow substantially, like 75 cards or something until you can level up quite many good and rare cards. Since you receive player cards regularly, some good and some bad, there’s no sense in leveling up so often. Leveling up can be quite tricky since you don’t apply these upgrades to individual cards but rather your whole set of the player cards.
For this reason, keep an eye on your card decks and only keep the ones contributing to the Rarity Meter.
This indicates a high chance of winning matches be it against AI opponents or human ones.