NBA 2K26 – PlayStation 5 Review

NBA 2K26 by developer Visual Concepts and publisher 2K Games—Sony PlayStation 5 preview written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes

This time of the year is so much fun for sports fans such as myself. College and pro football are kicking off, with their related video games having come out a month or so prior. Major League Baseball is moving towards its most important games of the season and the NHL and NBA seasons are right around the corner. That means the annual release of NBA 2K is here as well, and the yearly question of whether or not the latest iteration of the series is worth picking up arises. To cut to the chase: yes, NBA 2K26 is worth it, though this year is more about incremental improvements than major changes.

I’ve been playing this series since it first released, and it has seen changes great and small, up years and down years along the way. NBA 2K26 is one of the better years, with gameplay that is smoother than ever and so many different ways to play that fans of the series should have plenty to do for months. 

Let’s start with the gameplay first, as it was the first thing I noticed. In part, that’s probably because NBA 2K26 puts that right in your face when you fire up the game. It pushes you into a sort of fantasy matchup game with no real stakes, but presenting the gameplay at its best with quality visuals and good players at your disposal to take advantage of shooting, rebounding and dunking like a pro. 

Of course, this intro probably comes in a bit too fast for my liking. Not because there was anything terribly challenging or even bad about it. As a veteran of the series, it was easy to pick up and play this quick matchup. I do think however, it would be nice to put in some options before rolling all of this out. I’m someone who generally turns off certain controller features like vibration or trigger feedback, and I prefer subtitles to read while I listen. Little things like that, but instead it goes from intro to pushing you right into the MyCareer mode with no breaks for quite a while. It was a really entertaining intro, but I’d appreciate access to options sooner than later.

The NBA 2K series has seen shifts from fast, arcade-like action to a slower, more slog-like almost simulation style of play. It’s a tough balancing act that seems to make incremental changes, but the actual feeling of movement in this year’s release feels better than the last couple of years. For one, shooting just feels right. The meter for your release timing is better than last year’s rather annoying dial. It feels like there’s a bit more forgiveness as the ball bounces around the rim and off the backboard. It is interesting to see the shot release meter better represent things like defensive impact and type of shot as well. The ‘green space’ (meaning an excellent release) can look huge if you have a skilled three point shooter taking a patient, open, standstill shot on the perimeter. However, that green 'made shot' portion of the meter can be impacted by a variety of things. If a skill defender closes in on you or your shooter is moving, that can make it much harder to time a made shot. Offense in general seems to benefit this year, as playful movement is less stiff and robotic than the last couple of years. Animations blend from standing to bursting forward to leaping off of the floor more fluidly than ever. 

That’s not to say defense is terrible, but I do think the pendulum has swung away from it a bit in 2K26. My primary character is an athletic power forward (styled after Shawn Kemp), and I was regularly shutting down my direct matchup only to watch as my teammates watched three pointer after three pointer sail over their heads and swish home, even on easier difficulties. This didn’t happen every game, but there were certainly some contests where it seemed like I was doing everything right myself. But in AI vs AI situations, more often than not the ball went in, signaling the lean towards offense over defense this season. 

Taking a look at the different modes, you have the usual quick play out there where you just pick teams, set the rules, roll the ball out and play. This has been largely unchanged since the dawn of time outside of the teams and players available to be used, and that’s still the case here this year. The MyGM and MyNBA modes are the primarily single player options, and they’re largely the same as well. One could argue that’s fine since they are already two very deep, very engaging modes. In MyGM you’ll be tasked with taking a modern team of your choosing the promised land, while doing your best to navigate player personalities and the demands of the team’s owner. It’s good stuff that adds some RPG-lite elements to the core goal of winning games and championships. 

MyNBA is similar in structure, but without the roleplay elements. It’s more of a team / simulation management game, with more options to play in different eras of the sport. This one is sort of maddeningly fun for me, as I grew up on 80’s and 90’s basketball and love the throwback presentations and drafting familiar names. Last year we got the Steph Curry era added. Sadly, no new Eras were added this year (though I’d like to make a plug for the Bad Boys one to be wedged in between the Bird / Magic and Michael Jordan eras, being a Michigander). It’s a massive collection of players and teams that provides a fun sandbox to play in. One negative however, is that it sometimes lacks some of the familiar names from past seasons, such as  the Go to Work Pistons era missing Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Prince. Thankfully, there are enough creation and community tools to recreate missing players and rosters to better reflect what rosters used to look at in real life (or create fantasy teams).

Next up, there’s the WNBA, which has received more and more attention in recent years. They show up in a couple of places. There’s a lightweight version of the MyCareer mode using WNBA players, that is less story-heavy and doesn’t have the same amount of micromanagement to your player development. It’s seen slow, steady improvement over the years, layering in some new features to keep it feel like its continuously evolving, just not as notably as the MyCareer mode.

The other place WNBA players are heavily seen is the MyTeam mode, which is usually one of the two most popular modes in the franchise. This is a mixture of fantasy sports and card collecting, where you earn currency (or spend VC – more on that later) to improve your roster of available players. This is a pretty common mode in most sports games (EA has been doing it with things like Madden Ultimate Team for many years now as well). As someone who plays fantasy sports and collects sports memorabilia such as cards, these modes feel like they should appeal to me, but often don’t hold my interest for long. That being said, NBA 2K has my favorite version of these, and this year’s is proving to continue that trend. The various objectives, the progression towards earning new players, the variety of modes all just work better here than their EA counterparts, and I generally enjoy my time with MyTeam, even if I refuse to spend actual money on it. There’s enough ways to earn new cards that I never feel compelled to plunge into the deep end of the microtransaction pool here, and adding WNBA players to the mix is pretty cool. Now, I will say it’s a little jarring having a 7’3” NBA center guarding a 6’3” WNBA center, especially in a sport where height matters so much. The WNBA one might be quicker and a better shooter, but they do seem at a disadvantage more so than their point guard counterparts which tend to skew shorter in both leagues.

Lastly, we have what is probably the most popular mode for most players, including myself – and that’s the MyCareer mode. Here you create a player to your liking (either doing so entirely from scratch or leveraging different pre-builds that try to emulate players past and present), plug them into a story and play through a series of hybrid online / offline modes such as park and NBA games. Progression here has long been a challenging topic, because it very much can feel like pay-to-win if you’re trying to play online against others. Skill is important, but at the end of the day if you have two players built to the same size and weight, and they are jostling for a rebound under the basket, the player who has a 90 rebounding is almost always going to get the ball over the player with a 70 rebounding ranking, regardless of timing and position. While it’s completely logical (reasonable even), the fact that you can spend real life money to accelerate the process is always going to rub some people the wrong way.

Thankfully, VC is not terribly challenging to earn this year. 2K is constantly trying to balance on this particular tightrope, as they don’t want to alienate their players unwilling to spend more money on the game after acquiring it. But the fact of the matter is, microtransactions make them money and companies like money. More on that in a bit. Back to the topic at hand is that this season, NBA 2K26 seems to find a pretty good balance. I felt like I was steadily able to improve my player in a natural, regular way that was rewarding by completing quests and playing games. 

One thing that really helps MyCareer is the story, called Out of Bounds, is more engaging than the last few years. It’s well written and generally well-voice acted and I had a lot of fun with it. It also has a lot more of a sense of ownership over ‘your story’ with choices made along the way. I’m curious enough to see what other choices might have looked like to eventually put a second created character through this gauntlet down the road. It's probably something different positionally like a crafty three point shooter / passer at point guard or a dogged athletic defender at shooting guard or small forward. All of these choices and your performance during these games has a tangible impact on how and where your player gets drafted into the league, which is pretty cool. It’s also worth calling out that I greatly appreciated this year’s smaller, more compact version of ‘The City’. Bigger is not always better, and this year’s version of the multiplayer hub in MyCareer is less confusing, with less time simply walking around to get from one place to another. Also the framerate and overall stability looks better as a result, so I consider this a win.

I think there’s still room to add some new layers to MyCareer mode. For example, something we saw in this year’s EA College Football was high school games that impact potential college decisions. I wouldn’t expect NBA 2K to have every college out there, but they’ve done a lightweight version of the collect selection process in the past and I think there’s room to do something even more interesting this space as MyCareer seems to be giving more thought to your early journey this year. 

I also feel like there’s a bit of a missed opportunity here to better leverage the game’s older players and eras. You see them show up in MyTeam and MyNBA – but there are a wealth of older players and storylines that could be leveraged in MyCareer. I’ve seen this touched on once or twice in the past, such as a MyCareer that had you playing your father and grandfather in a handful of specific scenarios. I thought those were cool, but wonder if there couldn’t be more done in that space. Still, all in all – this year’s MyCareer was very entertaining for me and I know it’ll be occupying lots of my time in the coming weeks (maybe months).

Despite all the good things going on here, and handful of opportunities for improvement, no conversation around an NBA 2K game is complete without at least touching on the microtransaction element. Everyone has a different threshold for acceptance on the topic, and thankfully this year’s NBA 2K26 doesn’t feel like you are being punished for not spending more money on the game. It does at times feel like you are missing out though, especially in MyTeam. Adding season passes, which are thrown in your face the moment you log into the mode just feels a little greedy as a first impression after you just purchased the game. Having some quests locked behind this pass doesn’t feel great either. There are constant reminders that you could make your life just a bit easier or your progression just a little bit faster if you spend a little extra money on VC (Virtual Currency). I’m sure 2K Games makes entirely too much money off of this to see these microtransactions ever go away, and this year didn’t feel as egregious as prior years, but I wanted to talk about them all the same.

The other thing I wish NBA 2K would do is better unify the game experiences / VC progression. If you’re going to make VC such an ever-present part of the game, I’d like to see it be the only currency. In MyTeam there’s actually two currencies you can use to purchase new cards / packs. One is VC and the other is a currency that only appears in MyTeam. It’s a weird split ecosystem that makes me feel like time spent in MyTeam doesn’t help me overall because I can’t earn VC in it. Other modes like MyGM and such do allow you to earn VC, which is appreciated. That makes the exception in MyTeam seem a bit off. 

The other thing is the season progress. There is a new ‘season’ every so many weeks, and you can earn rewards for activities done in both MyCareer and MyTeam. I like that instead of having two separate season progressions. They were combined into a single progression path that combines your efforts from both the MyCareer and MyTeam modes. I would like to see that progression added to other modes such as MyGM or playing WNBA games. Similar to how I’d like to see a single currency that kind of brings time spent in various modes together to create a unified sense of progression. I think doing so with seasonal rewards would have a similar impact.

Overall, NBA 2K26 is a great basketball experience. The presentation continues to be best in class, the action on the court is smoother than ever and there’s a wide variety of modes to keep fans busy. Some modes are relatively untouched, but the most popular ones have seen some notable changes quality of life improvements worth calling out. Microtransactions are still ever-present, but not as bad as years past. Although there’s still opportunities to reward time players spend in whatever their favorite modes by bringing all the currencies and rewards into better alignment. Fans of the NBA or WNBA will want to check this year’s release out.

 

Score: 8 / 10