You play Frequency Vibrations, 'Freq' for short - that’s your nickname, everyone will call you that no matter what name you actually choose, and it carries over into your post-narrative career, so you might as well get used to it. Lee wrote, produced, and directed Livin’ Da Dream, the framing device for the first half-dozen hours of NBA 2K16’s career mode, like it was a feature film you’re invited to rewatch it in full on your player’s private practice court after you’re led through the conclusion by enough gameplay. This year’s version of M圜areer marks a major step away from the loose narratives and scattered cutscenes of games past.

I love this goofy part of an otherwise serious game, and that’s why it hurts me to tell you that 2K and Spike Lee have come together to ruin its newest version. When all of your work and skill development culminates in a windmill yammed on some unsuspecting center’s head - or a trip to the Hall of Fame - there are few things more rewarding. The NBA 2K series’ create-a-player mode - it’s been called MyPlayer and M圜areer at various points in the series - is one of my favorite things about sports video games.Īt its best, it captures the essential silliness of achieving individual, virtual greatness and marries that silliness to a potent, finely tuned power fantasy. Tiny point guards who can jump like Spud Webb and bomb threes like Steph Curry prototypical shooting guards, chiseled from marble and feted with endorsements paint-bound monoliths who back their way into MVPs and championships I’ve made them all, played them from the ends of benches to fake billboards around the world. I’ve spent hundreds of hours lifting nobodies to NBA stardom over the last half-decade.

Nba 2k16 crossover