When 2K Sports announced the changes they were making to MyCareer in NBA 2K18 prior to release, nobody really knew what to make of it. The initial trailer looked like some sort of fascinating cross between Grand Theft Auto and NBA Street. “The Neighborhood,” as they called it, was a place where you could do anything from joining pickup games, to sneaker shopping, to hitting up the practice gym, all while hanging out with your virtual basketball homies.
The dream was that in this new open-world social space, anything and everything was possible. While NBA 2K18‘s execution wasn’t quite as streamlined as we would have hoped, it’s still an awesome idea we’d like to see them build on in NBA 2K19.
Thankfully, gamers like NBA 2K enthusiast “MarLuThaKang” are doing exactly what we had hoped to see more from out of “The Neighborhood.” MarLuThaKang got together with a couple of his buddies and re-created Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” video as best as you could expect in NBA 2K18, and it’s pretty excellent.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba2lJn-FF7f/?taken-by=marlu_tha_kang
This is exactly what “The Neighborhood” needs more of. The best open-world social spaces like the one NBA 2K18 is trying to create forgo realism – for example, slow movement speed – and instead focus on what makes this stuff fun. MarLuTheKang’s re-creation of “Thriller” is all fun.
In the comments over at /r/NBA2K, MarLuTheKang revealed that the choreography for this only took him about 30 minutes to put together, which leaves the rest of us with no excuses. This is a call to action. We want to see more of this in NBA 2K18.
