Review: NBA 2K23’s microtransaction obsession spoils an otherwise great game

videogameschronicle.com:

NBA 2K23 could have been the best basketball game ever made. There are times, lots of them in fact, when it feels like a high point not only for the NBA series but for modern sports games.

There are areas of the game that pay such reverence to the sport itself, provide so much fun and such a huge amount of things to do that make the core of NBA 2K23 spectacular. From a sheer gameplay perspective, it’s difficult to overstate how much we enjoyed this game.

However, there’s a cancer at the heart of NBA 2K23.

For all the amazing things that this game does, for all the strides it makes in terms of historical content that should put other sports games to shame, there is a lingering uneasiness that’s riddled throughout the game.

Virtual Currency. Virtual Currency or VC as it’s known, has been in these games for a decade, but it’s rarely been so utterly prevalent that for players with no interest at all in engaging with the microtransactions, it’s impossible to avoid.

From the minute you can interact with the game, it’s there. The first thing you’ll do when you load the game up is often dismissed an advert to buy packs of virtual cards in MyTeam, a feat that without VC is an endless grind.

But sadly, for sports games, these kinds of MXT-first card game modes are very popular. FIFA Ultimate Team, the endless money generator for EA, has really paved the way in that space, but one of our arguments in favour of the way it’s handled in FIFA is that at least it’s quarantined in its own mode. This isn’t the case for NBA 2K23.

MyCareer, which sees players begin what is supposed to be a basketball career by joining the team of their choosing. I say “supposed to be” because, as has been the case for a few years now, the basketball career itself