It has been quite a while since we have covered sports titles in Digital Foundry, but with the advent of 2K MT about the new wave of consoles, we’re seeing something genuinely fascinating here, using a proper generational jump in fidelity throughout the board. To illustrate that, we took a peek at the sport mostly on PlayStation 5 and PS4 Guru, but we also spent some time with the Xbox Series consoles. While it may not seem like this on the surface, sports games really are – from what I could tell – among the harder genres to perform on. Truncated development schedules require annual entries in each show, meaning less time between every release but more than that, these games need to match up to a properly’actual’ experience, often delivered with a TV-like presentation. A game such as NBA 2K21 needs to deal with real people in real locations performing complex, interlinking actions. If you are off by even a hair, you’re diving straight into the uncanny valley.

What exactly makes this so hard? Well, nailing the arenas and player likenesses is a massive part of the equation but it’s the motion which makes this so difficult. Developer Visual Concepts – whose job on this franchise dates all the way NBAck into the Dreamcast age – is doing some excellent work here. While it’s easy enough to spot the imperfections in the visuals, if you just let the game clean over you, it really starts to look unbelievably authentic in actions. When firing on cylinders, it really does look like a NBAsketNBAll.NBA 2K21 includes a huge roster of players out of current NBA athletes to legends in the past. The models themselves are intricately detailed with realistic skin shading, perspiration, and facial expressions. Players look around the courtroom and react to plays in real-time. It is not perfect, because there’s a sign of the lifeless eyes’ effect, but it is solid. As with last-gen versions, Buy MT 2K21 utilizes a cloth simulation for toddlers as well – because you move around the courtroom, the cloth flows and reacts realistically.