NBA 2K22 For Xbox Series X|S welcomes us to the latest edition of NBA 2K, which features a lot of brand new ways of going about things, gone is the cinematic storytelling in MyCareer, as it is done in a totally different way, added in is season, that will freshen the game up every couple or months or so. This reason is based on Season 1, Call to Ball. MyTeam added some new things as well, and the City has a lot going on. As usual, I am not into MyTeam/Park/ProAM/The Rec so if you're looking for a review on those, I don't got it. I will talk MyCareer, MyNBA The W and of course gameplay. They made changes to the face scan this year and for the 1st time in a while it was annoying to get a scan. I had a good scan but it had this stupid glitch where his teeth would poke threw his chin sometimes, but anyway lets start with my favorite mode.

MyCareer, I was worried we wouldn't get any type of story with the cinematics' gone, but we do get a story, this year we play as MP, YouTube star starting his basketball career, how you wanna go about it though, college, G-League, or Chris Burkely, its on you. If you pick college you can still go to the G-League the next year (which I did, because I was not ready for this game's WILD AI defense in college) but you can't go from the G-League to College. So instead of just a big movie like story telling, this game works as basketball RPG, you still get cutscenes but you have to trigger them, by going to the location in the map and unlocking quest. You have several quest, the main quest deal with your career, as you need to do them in order to play NBA games. You have music quest line and a fashion quest line, you have a brand attribute and on it is music and fashion do different things to to raise them to advance in the quest lines. For the music quest line you get to embark on a hip-hop career which features one of my favorite rappers The Game. In the fashion quest line you look to start a clothing brand, however its glitched (for me at least) as I couldn't get past level 8 on the chart (and the side quest for it that you can do everyday is glitched as its backwards, it says play 10 park games in 24 hours and 3 NBA games, but of course they messed up and when you play NBA games it counts as park and vice versa) doing the Runway also doesn't help, so the quest was broken again at least for me. With so many different quest and little goals to do during the game, you have a lot of ways to earn VC and to me that's great. The draft is back! This year you can't pick whatever team to go to the pre draft stuff actually matters again, and depending how you do will determine where you end up. The RPG method might not be for everyone though, as it does get annoying having to go from places to places in the city instead of the story just going.

Moving on to the city, NBA 2K21 had the city too, but there was no real reason to go out there (at least for me, as a MyCareer player) because the hub was a menu screen, and you had quest but they weren't important to anything. In this one you have Personal Brand, Season, City Quest and City MVP quest all which pretty much sends you out into the city to do. The city has its problems however, you may run into some framerate issues and sound issues, so many time I went out there and the sound is just buffering, or it freezes for a little bit. The city is pretty big and its slow  to get around, you do have a free skateboard, you can buy a bike or a scooter and unlock a Go-Kart, but there's only one place you can fast travel to, and that's your home, if you earn enough MyPoints (doing quest, playing games ect.) you will get a Penthouse, which will unlock a zipline and will zipline you to any of the affiliate courts. This zipline glitches almost every time lol.

Seasons, level up by playing Park, Rep, ProAm and AnteUp games the whole online badge grinding part of 2K, I don't really care about, so I didn't level up past 7 in season one. Every season will give you prizes for leveling up and you got 40 levels in total. Season's also will freshens up the game as whole, adding in new things, new awards every season as your level will reset to one. New things will be added to the game, as well as things will taking out, gameplay wise, new amination, new looks of courts things of that nature, as well as new quest, same for MyTeam new things will be added over there. The Old Gym is the only thing online I played, this is random 3 v 3 battles, no long winded waits you go to the old gym, you get matched up and you play.

Now lets move on to MyWNBA, which has MyWNBA mode, Quick Play, 2K Share Setups, 2K Share Scenarios, The Playoffs and the only mode really worth talking about, (well beside MyWNBA which is just MyNBA for the WNBA) The W. This is MyCareer for the ladies not to much as changed from last year, as you still have to choose from pre made builds, however you get to pick your badges this year, so its seems like they will take baby steps, before you can build your own build, they still can not enter the city. But the mode works as a career mode for a WNBA players, and after every game you have three options of an event, this works towards Career and Job process which is broken down into different categorize, the more you fill them up the more things you are able to unlock. New is this thing called Contact Workout, where you can play 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 games but this is with A.I albeit, I had fun playing these as warm up games. The W Online is still boring, it still a 3v3 you get two random online teammates to take on 3 WNBA players cpu and its just boring, The CIty as a mode for this also where you play CPU Kevin Durant Kareem Abdul-Jabber and Dirk Nowitzki, which is also extremely boring and unfair because they all big and I'm just 6'3. You can play with friends this year... if you have any playing this mode, but during this you can earn EXP LVL up and earn season rewards.

MyNBA, this at one point was neck and neck for my favorite mode in 2K, but MyCareer as ran away with that lately and no different this year. Not to much as changed really, only major difference if the coaching staff, MyStaff. If you got the budget you can hire a lot of coaches to add to the staff, You can hire a coach for you Coaching Staff, your Front Office, you Scouting Staff, and your Sports Medicine Staff. Other than that its still just MyLeague and MyGM in one, and I guess thats fine, because at the core this mode is always fun, you have so many ways you play and shape the NBA however you want.

Gameplay, oh my God, lets finally talk about it, listen the cpu's defensive is ridiculous. At the start of MyCareer you getting locked up, but evevutally things will get easier, but at first it felt impossible to do anything on offense. Sometimes the cpu is just overpowered, I mean the entire team is playing All-Defensive team like defense and you're getting locked up by players who don't lock up anyone in real life. As MyPlayer got better, this started to die down and scoring became easier and I went on a massive win streak, but every once and awhile this super clamp would come up, and evevutally it was only happening with player who really are stoppers and teams with great defensive.  This crazy locked down defense carries over into MyNBA as well. Lets talk more about CPU, because your Teammates CPU is nothing like that! I'm a SG and the center would so many times guard my guy instead of their own and for some reason now I'm guarding the center. The other teams CPU seemed to always help on defense, your team just watches no help defense. The cpu feels like they will block any shot as long as they're a taller player. Passing, you pass the ball and the cpu is anywhere near it its a steal, and I can't tell you how many times a pass felt and looked like it was throw to the other team, cpu plays that passing line x12. In pass 2Ks you can aim your right stick to where you want to pass it and it will have a chance of going there without the icon pass, yeah not this year, you gotta icon pass or your player will do the dumbest pass.  Meter, the meter as changed its not on the group anymore, its next to you, which is fine, getting greens is fine, but sometimes the meter will change, on close outs and if defenders are clear it will dispute your timing and change your meter. They added a meter to dunks, why I don't know but this only happens when you down stick a dunk and you get a QTE to press X at the right time on an ally-hoop. If you go up, left or right on the d-pad for a dunk, you won't get a meter. The gameplay is fun overall, it feels smooth, defense clearly as improved and getting to the basket and shooting feel good, and with badges everything gets easier.

Overall, we have a great 2K this year, the game as bunch of other little modes I haven't talked about, that make it every year that I bright up like PlayNow and BlackTop. Game also added in some other cool stuff like dunk celebration, and a fashion show Runway to show off your clothing as well as mall! Last year I felt store was were to far and now they have a spot where everything is together. I had fun, I'm having fun and there's really something in here for every basketball fan to love, I do recommend this game, but I have to take points off for so many lags and glitches threw out the game, I missed out on a NBA Championship celebration because of a camera glitch, it was just a lot of weird stuff that made me go, this game is dumb. Other those hiccups, I'm having a great time.

Overall-9.2
Gameplay-9.3
Graphic-9.5