November2020
Review NBA 2K21 (PS5) - An Ambitious Effort That Excels on the Court
Green release
Sports games go hand-in-hand with console launches like LeBron James and retweets. Except this hasn’t been an ordinary year at all: the basketball season only just concluded after being played in an empty gym in front of virtual crowds and NBA 2K21 is the only sports simulation available on the PlayStation 5 for now. That will change...
September2020
Review WWE 2K Battlegrounds - Rubbish Wrestling and Microtransactions Galore
World Wrestling Spendertainment
Honestly, there's something sinister about WWE 2K Battlegrounds. And no, we don't mean Bray Wyatt's creepy mask, or the grotesque character models that look like they were designed by somebody watching Wrestlemania through one eye after a big night on the gin. No, there's a nefarious aura surrounding this game because...
Review NBA 2K21 - Perfect for Those in the Bubble, Good for Everyone Else
Ballers only
NBA 2K21 captures the see-saw flow of real-world basketball so well that you’ll feel at one with thousands of virtual fans when you nail a clutch corner three with seconds left on the clock. Visual Concepts’ simulation has, along with the MLB The Show series, always been a cut above the competition when it comes to broadcast-style...
August2020
Review PGA Tour 2K21 - Sim Will Suit Golf Fans to a Tee
Green screen
If you’re the type of person who prefers their country parks to have 18 holes, then you’ll no doubt be familiar with The Golf Club series. Canadian developer HB Studios’ efforts over the course of this generation have been fascinating to observe from afar. The first game in its simulation series launched shortly after the...
June2020
Review NBA 2K20 - Brilliant Basketball Sim Soured by Businessmen
Tank for Zion
Republished on Monday 29th June 2020: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of July's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. There has to be tensions at NBA 2K20 developer Visual Concepts behind-the-scenes. We’re not ones to gossip, but the California-based team must be frustrated...
November2019
Review WWE 2K20 - 2K Sports' Wrestling Sim Hits Rock Bottom
Undisputed Error
WWE has released a video game based on its flagship brand of sports entertainment every year for close to three decades now, so it may be surprising to some that this year’s entry has veered away from the franchise’s grappling roots in a variety of ways. For a start, all traditional forms of locomotion have been removed, as you...
October2018
Review NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 - A Disappointing Sequel
Alley-oops
In 2017, NBA Playgrounds came out of nowhere and slam dunked its way onto the PlayStation 4, giving basketball fans a solid alternative to the ultra-realistic simulation the NBA 2K series offers. It was something we hadn’t seen since NBA Jam’s last entry in 2010, and while it wasn’t perfect it did provide a lot of fun. It seems that...
Review WWE 2K19 - The New King of the Ring
The crown jewel
Much like the WWE’s actual touring schedule, the WWE 2K series never stops. This lineage of games has been releasing every single year since WWF SmackDown on the original PlayStation in 2000. As a result, each entry has started to become mostly iterative rather than radically different, as all annual sports games eventually become...
September2018
Find a new slant
It gets lonely at the top. The NBA 2K franchise has been the undisputed king for almost a decade now when it comes to virtual basketball. Long gone are the days of being the plucky underdog who scrapped for years, slowly but surely chipping away at EA’s vast, seemingly untouchable, video game sporting kingdom. NBA 2K is now the...
Review The Golf Club 2019 Featuring PGA Tour
Easy, Tiger
You can infer a lot from The Golf Club 2019 Featuring PGA Tour’s title. HB Studios acquired the license to the sport’s flagship tour somewhere during development, and this game feels a teensy bit muddled as a result. In many ways, it’s an evolution of the two golf titles that the Canadian developer has released on the PlayStation 4...
October2017
Be like everyone
Wrestling fans across the globe had high hopes for the WWE video game franchise when the license was acquired by 2K Games, believing that with a fresh and more reputable publisher at the helm they would finally get the game they had always dreamed of. Unfortunately, since the franchise has moved to the PlayStation 4 it has been a...
September2016
Swish
The NBA 2K series has always been the most eye-catching of sport game franchises because of its excellent presentation and attention to detail, not to mention its stunningly realised visuals. NBA 2K17 is no different, and ups the ante to make quite possibly one of the best sporting experiences on PlayStation. Sure, it doesn't have any huge...
November2015
New, Day Sucks
It's been two years since 2K Sports took the reins from THQ and began to offer its own spin on the flagship WWE game series, with last year's entry very much seeming like a testing ground for the company's ambitious goals. However, with 2K16 now body-slamming store shelves, has it learned from its mistakes? While the controls are...
November2014
Three-Star Frog Splash
It’s been a month since we saw WWE 2K15’s last-gen offering – a game that we called “a kick in the teeth” – released on the PlayStation 3, but with updated visuals, an improved control scheme, and promising new game modes, is its PlayStation 4 big brother much better? Thankfully, the power of the next-gen hardware...
Low blow
If you’re a wrestling fan, it’s been hard to ignore 2K Sports’ constant bragging about just how revolutionary WWE 2K15 is going to be. However, while this certainly looks to be true with the PlayStation 4 version, the recycled gameplay and samey ideas present in the last-gen effort leave a lot to be desired. When booting up the game...
October2014
Three-peat
There’s no question that NBA 2K has become the gold standard when it comes to basketball simulators, raising the bar year-after-year with great modes such as ‘My Career’ and ‘My GM’ that allows fans of not only the sport but also the league experience to fashion their own careers. Where this franchise has made its money, though,...
December2013
Flying through hoops
Visual Concepts’ vaunted NBA 2K franchise has a reputation for its high standards, and the series’ latest entry on the PlayStation 4 continues that sequence of slam dunks by towering over its PlayStation 3 counterpart. Not content with a mere visual upgrade, NBA 2K14 on Sony’s next generation system plays a totally...
November2013
Laying the Smackdown
An orphan of THQ’s unfortunate demise at the beginning of this year, the WWE videogame license was quickly snapped up by 2K, and while its role appears to have been limited to simply overseeing WWE 2K14’s completion, the final product is the most comprehensive wrestling package yet. As the 30th anniversary of WrestleMania...
October2011
The legend returns
Last year's NBA 2K11 was a sublime tribute to the league's greatest ever player, Michael Jordan, and one of the finest sports games ever created. This year's follow-up NBA 2K12 takes things a step further, bringing in 14 more legendary players and a host of new game modes. Whereas last year's effort was built around the famous...
October2010
Truly the greatest
NBA 2K11 arrives with the usual fanfare you'd expect to surround the latest outing of this highly-acclaimed series, but this time there’s a huge, unmissable feather in its cap. Michael Jordan, the titular “greatest of all time”, appears in the game, but we’re not just talking his likeness. This is Jordan’s career: his...
