NBA 2K15 - Xbox 360

The very first thing NBA 2K15 has you do when you fire the game up is... well, play a game. You don't choose your team, there's no commentary. It's just you and the court. While there's no doubt a practical reason for this - something loading in the background, perhaps - it's a bold start to the game. 'This is it', 2K is telling you. Here are the bones of this thing.

What you'll notice there is that movement has been tightened up. It feels slick. Shifting your momentum, faking, floating the ball over a defender, it all feels great. Handling the ball feels more intuitive and the fine movements allocated to the right analogue stick are much more reliable now. This fine-tuning means that, particularly on the offensive, you can pull off smarter moves with more confidence when it comes to the execution.

As you'd expect, everything looks better than it did in NBA 2K14, and the game is creeping ever-closer to being mistakable for a real televised game of basketball.

Create-a-player has been expanded on, with more options than ever. Everything from skin tone to eyebrow shape can be tinkered with.

MyCareer has been changed a little, too. Now undrafted players are looking to get 10 day contracts that will give them chance to impress clubs and find a home, meaning they'll get chance to see more of the NBA than in previous years. A number of NBA pros have even lent their voices to the game, making scenes in MyCareer more immersive than ever. As an added bonus, you can take your player online now!

For all the added bells and whistles, though, NBA 2K15 is really about playing a tighter game of basketball than ever before. more