NBA 2K17 is the game every basketball fan has been waiting for. The 2K17 version introduces a lot of new stuff with the new MyCareer mode being one of the highlights of this years’ release. NBA 2K is considered as the king among basketball simulators but is this 2K17 entry still worthy of that title? Time to find out in our review.

Start your career

Let’s start with the new MyCareer mode first, since this is obviously one of the most improved modes in the game. It’s not a new mode but you can finally do what the mode promised from the start: create your own character and rise to the absolute top. In MyCareer mode, you’ll start off where a lot of famous basketball players started their professional career; college.

In here you’ll play a lot of matches and depending on your results, you’ll be recruited by one of the bigger teams, giving you and your buddy Justise Young a chance the play with the big boys. Together with Justise (played by Michael B. Jordan), you’ll start your professional NBA career as rookies and you’ll need to play tons of matches across the States. If you manage to do well, you’ll even have a shot at the infamous MVP award for Most Valuable Player of that match.

Up to now, this isn’t something you can’t do outside of the MyCareer mode, playing matches is something you’ll be able to do in a lot of modes so why is this MyCareer mode this special? Well, the off-days got improved. During your days off, you’ll be able to interact with the fans, close new sponsor deals, change the way your player looks and even set out the next couple of events.

Unlike NBA 2K16, the events aren’t set in stone and it’s up to you to decide what you want to do. This gives the game a small RPG layer and more freedom to approach the mode the way you want. This results in an interesting story including multiple paths. If you want to see it all, you’ll have to start different careers to see the difference between some of the choices. MyCareer mode isn’t a fun extra any longer, it’s finally one of the biggest and most fun modes the game has to offer.

Manage your own team 

As if creating your own basketball star wasn’t enough, the MyGM mode also returns, enabling you to manage one of the NBA teams. You can literally change everything about the team, aren’t happy with the selected players? No problem, you can start the off-season of last year and recruit the players you want in your team. Once you’ve done that, you can create your own arena, logo and shirts, just like a real manager would do.

It doesn’t get better than this

The amount of control and power in the MyGM mode is huge; you can even call in a council to change some of the NBA rules. Want the buzzer to buzz a little longer? Try to bring it up during one of the meetings and see what happens afterwards.

Besides these options, you still have to ability to transfer players from other teams, trade your players for money and keep a close eye on the money your making. Just like it would be in our world, managing a team isn’t easy and you’ll need to consider the moral of your team as well. When the moral is low, your team won’t win that many matches and you won’t earn that much money. MyMP truly is a managing simulator inside a basketball simulator and it’s impressive to see just how good everything is created. If you’re up for a true challenge, you can even manage more than one team, needless to say, this isn’t an easy task.

The perfect basketball game

Having those careers and managing options is great but a game like this revolves around the basketball itself of course. Thanks to some new options and improvements, NBA 2K17 is the perfect and most realistic basketball game on the market. Let’s talk about the new stuff first. 2K made sure the balance of this edition is even better as 2K16 and lowered the ratings of some of the most popular players. By doing so, the developers made sure they don’t need to create player cards with a 98 or 99 rating, leaving no room for improvements. LeBron James is rated 85 in this edition for example, which means you can still improve the player with your own actions. Thanks to this, you’ll be able to play against different types of LeBron’ offline and online since you can for example tweak the shooting on one card while tweaking the speed on another. This results in a more realistic and personal experience in the end.

Besides these improvements, 2K also added a new feature called Dynamic Duo. This is a system that enables two different players to create a connection on the field. This mirrors the real experience where players of the same team know what they have to do in order to score more points. If you have two players that share some kind of connection, you can activate a certain feature where you’ll be able to perform mind-blowing combos on the field, leaving your opponent far behind. It’s a great new mechanic that feels like a ‘super move’, without ever losing the sense of realism.

This realism is the biggest selling point of NBA 2K17 for sure. 2K added a lot of new commentators so you’ll rarely hear the same comment during a match ever. They also recorded a lot of new audio files to deliver the most realistic sound ever in a game. If this isn’t enough, 2K also recreated a lot of arenas, focusing on realistic lighting effect to bring those arenas even closer to the real ones. Everything looks very realistic and this is by far the best-looking basketball game that ever appeared on the market.

Conclusion: 

NBA 2K17 is the best basketball game we’ve ever played. The modes offer enough variety to keep you going and thanks to the realism, you’ll always want to play ‘one more match’. It’s crazy to think about the amount of effort that went into the creation of this product but in the end, it was all worth it without a doubt. If you’re a basketball fan, there’s simply no reason not to buy this masterpiece.

9.5/10