NBA 2K11 - Wow!

28 minutes until this goes on sale for $30 at Amazon, PS3/360 both.

Stele wrote:

28 minutes until this goes on sale for $30 at Amazon, PS3/360 both.

Got the PS3 version. Can't trust the PC patch process still, and what the hell, Jordan will look good on my 40" tv.

Anybody else on PS3 version, friend me, we'll try that my player pickup stuff sometime.

I'm brand new to PS3 so I haven't used the friend system yet. When I figure it out I'll send you a friend request, if that's what its called.

By the way I can't seem to save mid-game and then resume at a later date since the patch. I can play for a quarter or so after resuming, and then it inevitably freezes on a free throw at some point.

Slumberland wrote:

By the way I can't seem to save mid-game and then resume at a later date since the patch. I can play for a quarter or so after resuming, and then it inevitably freezes on a free throw at some point.

Playing on 360 or PS3? It's worked fine for me on 360.

Dernit.

360. I'm gonna give it another shot now that I've skipped ahead to a second season, see if some kind of kink worked itself out.

Well I finally cracked open the PS3 game today. Wow.

I played the opening Bulls-Lakers game, even though that apparently didn't count towards challenges. But hey I was too excited when I saw the starting lineups and heard the commentary.

Went ahead and did the first Jordan Challenge. Scored 64 against the Celtics, and won the game, just over 55% shooting. Not bad at all. Minimum 6 required assists. Man some of Jordan's teammates were bad in 85. I don't remember a lot of those guys, as I was only 5 at the time. Fittingly though, Charles Oakley led the team in fouls, with 5, almost fouling out. I do remember him from his later days in NY.

Looking forward to more challenges, and eventually my player. Fantastic play so far though. A few more turnovers than I used to get in 2k10, they really do play better pass defense, but it's a little more realistic now I think. Good so far.

Anybody else on PS3 please friend me up.

Well, after getting traded to Oklahoma City early in the season, I displaced Russell Westbrook as the starting point guard, and helped lead the Thunder to a 60+ win season, and home court throughout the playoffs.

So, 1st playoff series is against the 8th seeded New Orleans Hornets. I figured this shouldn't be too bad, I owned them pretty well during the season. That was a mistake, as the Hornets totally owned me for the first 2 games of the series, with Chris Paul pulling off moves on me that I certainly didn't see during the regular season. I lost game 2 by 20+ points. However, Chris Paul hurt himself at the end of game 2, and when I consulted the injury report afterwards, the estimate said that he would be out for 2-3 weeks! However, game 3 starts up, and David West decides to take over, and has 20+ points at halftime. Then he gets hurt early in the 3rd quarter! From that point on, the Thunder and I start tearing off nice scoring runs, and end up winning the next 4 games pretty easily.

2nd round is against the Spurs. This is a slightly different Spurs team, as a midseason trade shipped out DeJuan Blair and Tiago Splitter to the Suns for Robin Lopez and Grant Hill. They've played well against the Thunder during the season, but I was feeling confident going into Game 1...........

......... until Tim Duncan decided to hang a box score of 53 points, 22 rebounds, and 5 assists on me. Lost by 20+ points again. So, I have game 2 coming up, and I have no idea what I'm going to do about Duncan, since it's pretty apparent that Cole Aldrich and Nenad Krstic cannot handle him at all. I try to sweep in for double teams almost immediately once the ball is tossed into the paint, but Duncan either just fires a perfect fallaway in, or passes back out to Tony Parker, who seems to be much more accurate midrange shooter then I remember, hehe. I guess I'm going to try and prevent the entry pass more, but I just know that giving Tony Parker that kinda room is going to allow him to start lighting me up.

My Player mode is so damn addicting!

I think I may have found an unintended super spec:

Spoiler:

My SG 3pt specialist is now racking up 80+ points every game, shooting nothing but threes. (60% average) The new auto play calling patch only made things better in that if I don't go to the spot on the floor to start the play, they will just pass it to me when the play clock runs down for the easy trey. All the scoring leads to tons of skill points which only makes my player better at all the other aspects. Since I figured this out my team who was 4-14 has won 11 straight. We beat the Pacers last night 134-74.

If you have high offensive clutch and high 3pt and are shooting as the shot clock expires, it makes sense, within the game systems. Haha.

Stele wrote:

If you have high offensive clutch and high 3pt and are shooting as the shot clock expires, it makes sense, within the game systems. Haha.

Both 99.

My experience is that the added points in games don't really translate to more skill points. At 90 overall now with my PF I have no trouble hitting A+ every game, and I get the same amount of skill points whether I score 50 or 20 (as long as my other stats are good, which they usually are). I get between 1900 and 2100 every game, depending on how reasonable my goals are (9 offensive rebounds? o.o).

Averaging 29.3 ppg, 11.7 rpg, 3.2 bpg, 3.7 apg, and 1 spg after about 60 games in my sophomore season. My team, the Kings, is 50-9, the combo of Carmelo, Tyreke Evans and myself is nasty, we're all over 90 rated. I was at one point the leader in the MVP (and defensive player) race, but an injury forced me to miss 10 games, so I'm not considered for awards at the moment. Hoping that goes away, as I was looking forward to the 10k SP from getting the MVP.

*edit*

So I got the dreaded offseason glitch, or a variant of it, in My Player. It's the end of the postseason, and when I hit "play next game" nothing happens. That usually starts the offseason process of "recommend free agents" and "pick new team."

I guess my dude is stuck at 95 forever. I'm okay with that, really, but it's a pisser. I wanted to play with the Celtics for a year.

Did you have another save during the playoffs?

I alternate between 3-5 save games, always did in 2k10 too because I heard so many horror stories. Never had a problem yet myself, but if I ever did I don't think I'd lose more than 3 games of progress or so most times.

About 18 games in with my SG. I got drafted to Houston and they were playing pretty terrible so I asked for a trade after my 5 game minimum. Then things started improving and we won a couple games, but oh well, I got traded anyway. They sent me and Patrick Patterson to the Nuggets for Billups. I thought playing with Melo would be pretty great, but man they run a lot of plays for him and he jacks up a lot of shots. I guess he's the star and should get the most touches, but he takes some bad shots. Meanwhile I get in at PG a lot since we really only have one now with Lawson, but that should help me get assists, right? Wrong! I pass to wide open teammates and they toss up brick after brick after brick!

I know I've seen that complaint, that your teammate AI is bad, but I thought it was something about turning the difficulty up? I'm still on default pro and these guys couldn't shoot their way out of a paper bag. We lost one game when my team shot 26% and the opponent shot 52! And another game we lost by 2... I was in for the final few minutes... got a steal when we were down 2 with 41 seconds left, and dished forward to Afflalo I think it was... who bricked a 15 footer wide open. So annoyed.

But at least my guy is improving. After 14 games I got to start. I'm still in the low 60s overall rating, so got a way to go. Loving the post game press conferences, the minutes tracking, endorsements (although I don't have any yet)... there's a lot of additions to last year's mode. There's also a ton of in-game improvements with the grading system. Pass to assist is cool, the switching of who your guarding responsibility during transition or after screens is really excellent. Last year sucked so bad when your guy would break away and it would deduct points, even if your teammate threw the ball away and it was in no way your fault. Also loving the more visible grading system and stats bar, and how it shows rank up/down as you play. It's a much improved mode and it was already a lot of fun last year.

One thing I was hoping they would have is a sub in/out request. Sure maybe it's not always agreed to, but with team chemistry or whatever it could be more likely. When a guy is tired, he asks to go out of the game. When my stamina bar is low I'd like to get a breather. And of course when the team is blowing the lead I helped build I'd like to get back in the game. One of the early games the Rockets lost, we were up 2 when I got subbed in, made a run to be up 14 when I went out... and then while I sat on the bench for the last 6 or so minutes, they blew it and lost, never letting me back in.

Nope, I quit with the backup saves after the patch. v_v

Regarding your teammate's AI, I found it improved by leaps and bounds under two conditions: when you get the chemistry high enough that they always react to your calls for the ball, you can effect their looks and yours a lot more effectively. For the longest time on the T-wolves my only go-to scoring option was the post game, but by "the end" I took the ball on the wing every trip and did as I pleased. Myself and Demarcus Cousins became probably the nastiest pick and roll since Amar'e and Nash. I went from averaging 25-11-3 to 29-11-8 in the second half of the year.

The second condition is getting that little star over your own head as well. It takes forever, but alas. Melo averaged 15 a game shooting 53%, myself 29 shooting 58%. I felt like I was ruining a HoF career. That's why I was in the process of deciding to skip town: I wanted a team with a great PG, myself as the prime scorer, and three good defenders.

Playing PG, or passing in general, is very much a learning process in this game. I don't really know how to explain it, but you learn the passing lanes and your teammates' AI through repetition. Once my PF was 80 overall I started a PG, who became Russell Westbrook's backup. All he can do is pass and shoot 3's, but I rack up loads of assists with him (too many TOs for my taste, but such is the risk of living for the dime). He's averaging 7 per game after 15 or so games, 48 rating overall. Strangely he also averages 7 boards, I guess rebounding is more of a skill thing than a stat thing (his rebounding stats are the base for a Pass First PG). I was one assist away from his first triple double during one game, but decided to hold off til a key game. I guess my other guy messing up is a good opportunity to get the PG going again.

Until you're a starter you'll most likely be subbed out for the entirety of the fourth quarter unless you're playing long quarters.

For all the f*cking headache I've had with the 2k site (can't post on forums, can't get any admin attention via email), they have some pretty neat community features there. Here's my player and some relevant stats. Damn shame that he retired early to go join the circus and marry the bearded lady. Gonna get some videos of him up there sometime today too.

Yeah I get defensive rebounds pretty easy on my SG. I think the other guards tend to get back on D, and don't crash the offensive boards.

Guess I'll keep working on team chemistry in the press conferences.

And yes the website stuff is pretty cool. Although they apparently still don't have leaderboards for the PC guys. Wasn't surprised last year, but I thought they'd expand it this year. Maybe because too many PC users edit their saves and max their stats? I don't know.

In Association mode, does practicing actually do anything?

I'm 0-7, and would like to start winning

I only dabbled in Association last year. But I think you can practice with specific goals in mind. Like I seem to remember practicing shooting and getting a small % boost to everyone's shooting stats for the game, or something like that.

Haven't touched it yet this year, still over in My Player.

After that first game explosion, Tim Duncan wasn't a factor for the rest of the series, due to overwhelming defensive attention from myself. The Spurs fell 4-1, which left me to face the Lakers in the Western Conference finals. With Derek Fisher playing across from me most of the time, let's just say that getting into the lane wasn't a problem for my guy at all. I think I averaged about 38 points for the series, and swept the Lakers. James Harden may be a terrible jump shooter on my team, but he did a great job keeping Kobe in check. Now, it's Boston in the finals. I was a little worried about Rajon Rondo's defensive prowess, but a judicious use of screen and rolls took care of that problem, and I'm currently up 3-0 on Boston.

Funny game glitch: After winning game 3, the announcers have been congratulating our team for winning the finals. Unless I'm missing something, pretty sure the finals are a 7 game series, lol. Plus, during the post game press conference, I was asked about practice. We are talking about practice with only 1 more win needed for a series sweep? Really?

Probably after finishing off the season, I'll want to try playing a center or something. I think I made my point guard too good, and it's starting to get boring. I'd up the difficulty, but I don't want my teammates to turn into horrible players and have to end up being a Jordan every game, I like the team aspects of basketball. Guess we'll see once I'm done with the series.

There was a bug last year where you would win the finals with 3 wins instead of 4. 3-0, 3-1, whatever...

Sad to see that return.

It's the comments section at Kotaku. It's a half-step up from the GameFAQs boards.

Yeah Owen is probably the NBA 2k nominator. He's the only one I follow on twitter, so saw the announcement from there instead of the site.

The only problem I have is leaving off Galaxy 2. It's everything Galaxy was, but better. Better co-op. Better options for Mario/Luigi. 120 different stars after beating the game instead of the same 120. Better overworld, less wasted time getting to worlds. And lots of the best levels from Galaxy were revisited, expanded on, or used more. Just fantastic stuff all around.

/tangent

NBA 2k11 is one of Kotaku's four GOTY nominees, thanks to resident sports fan Owen Good I assume. It's a refreshing change to see a sports game getting attention from such a site, but it'll be beaten by either Red Dead Redemption or Mass Effect 2. The comments section was particularly disappointing, with a lot of people asking for the teams' heads for leaving out certain games for "just a sports game."

Couple notes:

Ran into two glitches today, one annoying and one that really pissed me off. The annoying one was getting stuck in the stands twice after Russell Westbrook slams. He'd do the animation like he ran into the cameraman, then get stuck back there. I would have to cause a free throw or call a timeout to get him out.

The second came while doing the fifth Jordan Challenge, the one where you have to win the whole Lakers-Bulls series with 31 ppg, 11 apg, etc. I scored 46 and 17, then after the Player of the Game video played the game soft locked. I could look at all the game stuff, but the 2k Nav Menu wouldn't come up, so I couldn't hit "quit" to get back to the main menu. Had to get back to the 360 dashboard, and unfortunately my progress did not save. Between this kind of thing and my PF having to retire early, the tech issues with this game are making me think it may get bumped from my top-5 of the year.

Stele wrote:

Yeah Owen is probably the NBA 2k nominator. He's the only one I follow on twitter, so saw the announcement from there instead of the site.

The only problem I have is leaving off Galaxy 2. It's everything Galaxy was, but better. Better co-op. Better options for Mario/Luigi. 120 different stars after beating the game instead of the same 120. Better overworld, less wasted time getting to worlds. And lots of the best levels from Galaxy were revisited, expanded on, or used more. Just fantastic stuff all around.

/tangent

Sports is the wild west, we won't get in any trouble for moving somewhat off topic.

I hate to admit that I have Galaxy 2 and haven't put more than 5 hours into it. This stems from two issues:

The first is pretty much everything you said. It was a little too much like Galaxy for me. Whereas in the first game I was constantly thinking "I've never seen anything like this in a video game," the second game was very much a sequel. Similarly to how AC: Brotherhood, while great, isn't going to wow me like AC2 did.

The second was my Monster Hunter addiction. From its release in mid-April until mid-June (Galaxy came out in May), I put in over 300 hours. This did not leave much time for other games, especially other Wii games.

I have no hope of seeing most of my personal GOTY nods on any other lists. Monster Hunter Tri, Darksiders, Bayonetta, MLB 2k10, NBA 2k11, Vanquish...all will be ignored for CoD, Halo, ME2, and RDR. Such is the folly of having odd tastes.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I have no hope of seeing most of my personal GOTY nods on any other lists. Monster Hunter Tri, Darksiders, Bayonetta, MLB 2k10, NBA 2k11, Vanquish...all will be ignored for CoD, Halo, ME2, and RDR. Such is the folly of having good taste.

FTFY

Wow I got rookie of the month for november even though I only average 9ppg. But I think it said for western conference?

Also, last game, I hit a 3 on the break and then next possession they called a play for me to shoot a 3. Felt good getting my number called

Whew. Double-OT game. Although the 2nd one shouldn't have happened. We called a post up with Melo, and Lawson never got him the ball. He just kept dribbling and dribbling until the clock got down to 4 seconds then he decided to jack up a shot.

But, good for me, I was able to get 10 rebounds with the extra time, so got my double-double, and 10 Reb game milestones. Lots of extra points.

And damn the coaching AI is still stupid for subs. I'm a starter now, supposed to have the most minutes per game, same as Melo. And yet, when Boston goes up 5, coach subs me out, with 4 min left. And then I sit there until there's 1:20 left and we're down 7. Thanks, as if there's a chance in hell of us coming back at that point. Even worse, they took out the ability to call a timeout from the bench that you had last year. At least with that, you could stop the clock and give the coach a chance to sub you in. Now you're just stuck there. Might as well do the sim thing, no point to watch from the bench if you can't even call time.

Also, anybody else having a glitch with Jordan Brand shoes? I keep unlocking them, but then it continues to only say I have 4 of 40 unlocked. Even though I've unlocked 8-10 different ones. And I even have one equipped right now, +3 speed, which I equipped when I got them, but now don't even appear on the list. It's like the new ones are replacing the old ones and my total never increases maybe?

Haven't had an issue with the Jordans, got all forty. What spot are you changing them from? You can do so from the "My Jordans" menu where you can see them all, but it's easier if you go My Player > Edit Player > Shoes. Whichever you're doing, try doing the other.

You might try going to GameFAQs forum for the game and search "jordans" to see if anyone else had a similar problem. Just don't bother posting <,<

Since I bothered to post I'll add to my running 2k11 blog here:

Instead of focusing on my PG now that my PF has glitched out, I've been exploring other modes. The Jordan Challenge is neat, but I could see a lot of them being a big hassle...so I wussed out and set the difficulty to rookie and the "feel" to casual. Screw 63, I could've put 105 on the Celtics if I so chose.

I also started dabbling in Franchise. Just like every other sports game, I've become obsessed with taking an awful team and making them serviceable via trades and free agency. It's proving somewhat difficult with the Timberwolves, but last night I got them to the best overall yet (from 74 to 79, 28th overall to 21st). Over the course of 20+ trades I managed to pry:

Russell Westbrook from the Thunder (Jonny Flynn, JJ Hickson and a first round pick)
Andre Iguadala from the 76ers (Wesley Johnson and a first rounder)
Greg Oden from the Blazers (Kendrick Perkins and a second rounder)

Teamed with Love and Beasley at PF and SF, it's not a bad team. Lacking a real 3 point threat (Beasley and Love can both sink a few), but still effective.

Still, I wanted this starting lineup to be all 22 or under. Hard to pull that off with a high OVR, because as it turns out there are absolutely no highly rated, young shooting guards around. OJ Mayo would have been, but his stats have been bumped down with the living rosters from an 82 to a 77. Even then, I don't know if I could get him from Iguadala as I only have one draft pick and virtually no trade-worthy bench players left (I won't give up Big Z, damnit!).

Yeah it's the My Jordans menu where it still only shows 4/40. But I can select more in the Edit Player. That's why I'm guessing it's a bug. But I'm curious what the trophy for earning Jordans will read, whether I can get it or not.

Of course in the main game menu it only shows me having 3 shoes, from playing the Jordan Challenges. Maybe that's what I have to get for the trophy?

Found a thread, yes at GameFAQs. Apparently the shoes are tied to your user profile. So when you're in My Player and get new shoes, you need to save, exit back to the main menu, and then save your user profile. Or it probably sounds like just saving your user profile before you shut the game off (or load up another game mode) will probably work. Hm. Quirky but at least it's not totally broken, and I can work with that.

With the 8 min lock, I think that rookie difficulty is the only way to do the Jordan Challenges. It's just not worth the time frustration, repeating a whole game because you came up 1-2 assists, rebounds, or field goals short.