There’s a new weekly TV show that features hints and tips from the developer and interviews with the best of the best in the NBA (some of which are painfully stilted), while pretty much everybody will be pleased to see the ubiquitous Virtual Currency (VC) prompts toned down from 2K14. The all-new shot meter does go a long way towards giving new players a required sense of timing for jump shots and hot spots around the court, but to be honest, after playing upwards of 80 hours in 2K14, personally I found it much easier to switch back to the regular system and judge the release on animation alone.Įlsewhere, Visual Concepts' interface design lottery has come up trumps in 2K15, with the menu system behaving in a slick and intuitive manner. Hop-step layups are no longer guaranteed points thanks to the aforementioned ability to nudge players off their shot, while even getting close to the basket with average players requires more thought and skill. In terms of difficulty, I also found it a much more difficult task to break down the opposition’s defence this year. The occasional strange animation choice for a pass or shot still remains, but on the whole it’s a smoother, more natural game of basketball that awaits. Shooters are now subtly jostled off balance or nudged in mid-air with believable heft, while grabbing a ball off the floor on a fast break is a much less jarring experience. It still plays an incredible game once you get used to the animation priority, and the steady stream of authentic player movements is bolstered in 2K15 with the addition of better collision modelling and ball pick-ups. On the court it’s pretty much the same smooth and heavy experience as previous years, with a working knowledge of common basketball manoeuvres required to obtain anything other than a sense of disillusion when first picking up the pad. Having nailed the fundamentals of their simulation a long time ago, the changes to NBA 2K15 are unsurprisingly small, but nonetheless noticeable for anybody invested in the fine print.

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