Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five modes that I came to enjoy after initially being uninterested in them.

As I’ve freely admitted before, I’m a creature of habit. Whether it’s sticking with my preferred mode, choosing retro gaming over a modern title, or messing around with any available historical content while on a retro kick, I’m drawn to the familiar. To that end, for a long time I was all about franchise modes. Multi-season play was a concept that many of us playing basketball games back in the 90s were keen to see, and it was a big deal when NBA Live 2000 PC brought us Franchise, complete with free agency, salary cap, the rookie Draft, and 25 seasons of play.

My enjoyment of franchise play continued as the mode evolved into Dynasty. To this day, my various franchise games remain some of my all-time favourite experiences on the virtual hardwood. At the same time, I’m not completely averse to change! Whether it’s been inspired by content creation, suggestions from my fellow basketball gamers, or just curiosity, I’ve branched out from franchise modes and ended up really enjoying playing something different. That includes modes I never expected to find appealing! I’m still interested in franchise and traditional season play, and some of these modes did ultimately turn out to be a passing fancy, but nevertheless I came to enjoy them.

1. Career Modes

There was a time when I figured that career modes weren’t for me. I appreciated the concept and was glad to see it implemented because I knew a lot of people were keen to have it, but I was content with franchise play…or so I thought! Spending time with My Player in NBA 2K12 ahead of reviewing the game definitely gave me a taste for the career mode experience. Even though having complete control over the team and making all kinds of decisions is what makes franchise modes so appealing, it was an interesting new challenge to relinquish that power to just focus on controlling a single player who didn’t always have the ball, and needed to level up and earn more minutes.

That My Player game didn’t last too long, and the save file was rendered unplayable by the official patch besides, but it did pique my interest. As a result, I was dedicated to MyCAREER come NBA 2K13, finishing a full season on 12-minute quarters as I’d previously done in franchise games that I was fully hooked on. That appreciation for MyCAREER continues to this day with the PlayStation 4 version of NBA 2K14, but I also really got into The One after revisiting it in NBA Live 18, particularly the Pro-Am Tour. It was a fresh setting with a slightly different approach, but the overall experience was familiar given all the time I’d spent with MyCAREER in NBA 2K.

2. Card Collecting Modes

Although I haven’t played them as religiously or to the same level of completion as franchise and career modes, there have been a couple of games where I’ve gotten into MyTEAM and Ultimate Team. Similar to the career modes, there was a time where I certainly understood the appeal, but simply wasn’t drawn to them. If I wanted to build a fictional squad, wheeling and dealing in a franchise game or a quick game with a custom team were more my speed. I was open to giving the card collecting modes a try though, and in a couple of games I’ve been able to pick up some of my favourite players and assemble fun lineups, which encouraged me to play them more often.

In fact, as much as I dislike recurrent revenue mechanics and don’t want to support them, I must admit that a couple of times I have spent money on those modes, namely when NBA Live 18 Ultimate Team featured weekly packs with guaranteed Legends. For the most part though, I’ve opted to go No Money Spent, taking full advantage of Locker Codes and other means of building my team. It was fun for a while, but it was a grind, and I eventually found myself in a similar rut to the one I’d fallen into with MyCAREER. I haven’t really touched MyTEAM recently, but I was still playing with my squad of 90s Legends in NBA Live 18 until the servers were shut down last year.

3. 2K Pro-Am & Online Team Play

Much as I used to stick to franchise modes with little interest in playing anything else – apart from the occasional exhibition game, of course – I once considered myself to be a strictly offline gamer. Well, at least for the most part. I dabbled with online team play and the occasional head-to-head game in the 2000s, but between the speed of my connection and the quality of the gameplay experience, I was content to leave that scene to other people. Come NBA 2K16 though, Kenny encouraged Arcane and I to join him, The X, and Valor for some 2K Pro-Am games. It was new, fresh, and above all, fun. I was already playing MyCAREER, so it fit in well with my gaming habits.

And so, while I continued to play “offline” MyCAREER, I was also now committed to levelling up a MyPLAYER so that I could take them online with our squad: NLSC THRILLHO. NBA 2K17 was the peak of my enthusiasm and enjoyment for 2K Pro-Am, as it added stat tracking, made it easier to squad up, and was a blast on the court with strong gameplay and a balanced archetype system. It ended up forming a habit, so even as the other guys lost interest and the games saw some frustrating changes, I was still grinding away so that I could head to The Rec. I’ve since broken that habit and not a moment too soon, but early 2K Pro-Am was definitely fun while it lasted.

4. 24/7

I came to enjoy this mode so much that I ended up covering it in one of the longest Wayback Wednesday articles that I’ve produced to date! It’s not altogether surprising that I wound up having fun with the 24/7 modes in NBA 2K6 and NBA 2K7. After all, it’s a forerunner to the career modes that I’d already come to enjoy by the time I finally went back to see what 24/7 was all about. It’s certainly a different experience though, being a barnstorming campaign mode centred on streetball and pick-up games rather than the NBA, though unlocking your player for use in the league was still the ultimate goal. In that respect, it bears some similarity to several MyCAREER stories.

Indeed, the narrative-driven 24/7: Next mode in NBA 2K7 is very reminiscent of a MyCAREER tale. Of course, what makes its campaign rather interesting is that unlike modern career modes – or previous iterations of 24/7 for that matter – there’s no need to upgrade your player. It was all about stick skills and the player archetype that you picked. In the previous games where we did upgrade our player, the progression was swift with a sensible difficulty curve. There are also challenging gameplay modifiers, from custom rules to exploding basketballs to inverted controls. It was short-lived and a stepping stone to an NBA career mode, but 24/7 was a fun part of my retro kick.

5. Blacktop

Whenever I talk about Blacktop mode, I need to shout out JaoSming. Jon’s love of Blacktop was a well-meaning running gag on the NLSC Podcast, being a different preference in a series dedicated to realistically depicting the NBA. Well, the joke’s on me now; thanks in part to co-op games with Dee, I’ve come to enjoy it as well! It’s not that I ever disliked Blacktop, but I was far more interested in the franchise modes and NBA-oriented gameplay than I was streetball. That’s still ultimately my preference, which is one of the reasons why I favour NBA Jam over NBA Street. Nevertheless, I’m now more inclined to jump into Blacktop and other modes based on streetball.

It’s a welcome change of pace from time to time. The sim gameplay is still there, but the rules and format lend themselves to quick showdowns when I’m not in the mood for a full game. It’s the same reason that I’ve come to enjoy The Streets in NBA Live 18’s The One, and the 24/7 campaigns in mid 2000s NBA 2K. Blacktop and its earlier incarnations lack that structure, but can also be more fun since I have control over the squads. Unfortunately a couple of games including NBA 2K14 made the best players on every team unlockable with VC, which is impossible now that online support has ended. Even so, there are enough good players to stage some fun streetball matchups.

What are some of the modes that you’ve come to enjoy after initially disliking or just being largely disinterested in them? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Modes I Came to Enjoy appeared first on NLSC.