If anyone’s asked me over the past few years which of the big annual sports franchises generally offered the most bang-for-your-buck on a yearly basis, I’ve probably said NBA 2K.
It’s not a hugely ringing endorsement – unless you’re interested in whichever minor tweaks to the formula are on offer, you can generally skip any at least a year or two of it or its competitors in the handegg or footsphere business without actually missing much. But, in a genre where the strength of the package, the sheer volume and depth of content aimed at letting you do a sports thing in various ways, is king, NBA 2K’s felt like LeBron. If he was constantly trying to sell you fake money.
NBA 2K25 is just as big as its notoriously girthy predecessors, clocking in at about 133GB on my PC, which is in the ballpark of Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3, both games that are noted for their hugeness. What you get for surrendering all that hard drive space isn’t a sports game so much as it is several smaller games that’ve combined into one giant mecha-sports thing. Like if you told Shaq, Kobe, and Phil Jackson to stand on each others’ shoulders.
