When you have Sub-Zero wearing #23 for the Chicago Bulls, coach only needs to say one thing during a fourth-quarter timeout: Finish Him!

Last year, 2K Sports did a shrewd thing, bootstrapping its flagging MLB 2K series to its best-in-class NBA 2K in a combo package announced a month before the baseball game was due for release. The publisher is doing the same thing again this year, but listing the bundle for $10 more.

Earlier this week, Metacritic bemoaned 2012 as a year of poorer review scores for video games than the one preceding it. Fewer titles surpassed the all-important 90—which practically guarantees job security to those who developed or greenlit the project—than in 2011. Interestingly, the three console platforms' average…

For as long as I have sought to illustrate posts with screengrabs from the NBA 2K series, I have despised its replay camera. Dedicated guys like MessenjahMatt can still produce virtuoso recreations of famous Air Jordan commercials using the game's PC version, but for the rest of us shlubs on a console, getting a…

Rarely considered for overall video-game-of-the-year honors, the uncommon diversity of sports video games, and the unique demands placed on them to recreate both a real-world sport and the real-life experiences associated with it, support their own class of awards more than any other genre. These are Kotaku's Stick…

Around halftime of a game on an NFL Sunday is a good time to take the temperature of the Madden NFL crowd. It's like the water department analysis that shows everyone flushing the john when the Super Bowl goes to the break. In this case, online gamers, many of whom have their consoles running and connected to the…

If the Video Game Awards are actually an awards show, and not just a keynote for promoting upcoming games, then the big news from last night was The Walking Dead: The Game. Eminently quotable analyst Michael Pachter said before the show that if this title, a downloadable self-published game, took home Game of the…

On a long drive back yesterday evening I heard over the radio that President Obama, using the White House bully pulpit in deficit negotiations, had opened a social media campaign designed to pressure Congressional Republicans. If tax cuts set to expire on Jan. 1 do so, middle-class families would take a cash hit of…

The state of NBA 2K13's roster update has been uncommonly bad to date. In the most recent episode of the Press Row Podcast, Operation Sports' normally placid Steve Noah needed bleeping when discussing the slowness and inaccuracy of the update. "There's been three players added in the latest update," Steve said, in a…

Around sports video gaming's water cooler, much is being made of NBA 2K13 clocking in as October's No. 1 seller on the NPD charts, and it is indeed an affirmation for sports video gamers as a whole. Sports video games are, culturally, treated as an outlier in core video gaming, yet they routinely send two, three or…

It's a year-round best seller and by all rights has never been better, but Ben Sin, writing for Kill Screen Daily, says NBA 2K13's competitive balance—online anyway—is completely thrown out of whack by the superteams that make the real league such a compelling story for basketball fans.

After James Harden (pictured via Operation Sports, above) was traded to the Houston Rockets in a weekend blockbuster deal, NBA fans were keen to see how he'd play with his new team in NBA 2K13. Trouble is, this morning's regular roster update didn't have Harden on the Rockets. Nor did it look a thing like the current…

In forums and comments, PC gamers come off as implacably angry about a number of topics. The most vehement responses are in issues that treat PC gamers like second class citizens; for example, DRM, console ports, DRM, piracy, DRM, delayed releases and DRM.

On Sept. 27, EA Sports scrapped NBA Live 13, the second straight cancellation in the series' troubled history. Quarterly earnings calls are coming soon and many will be listening intently for anything Electronic Arts has to say about an expensive license, coming to the end of a console generation, that hasn't produced…

On his ass is Doc Rivers, of the 1986 Atlanta Hawks. Putting him there is his son, first-round draft pick Austin Rivers (25) of the New Orleans Hornets. And at the sticks for this wonderful family get together is Austin's little brother, Spencer.

Some hacker cracked open NBA 2K13's files with a hex editor, found 17 uniforms on the disc that aren't yet exposed in the game, and created a roster file with all of the jerseys available. One is the notorious "THUDNER" alternate uniform for Oklahoma City, which will almost certainly require a patch to correct—if that…

Multiple images leaking out last night show NBA 2K13 featuring Oklahoma City's new alternate jerseys—with the team nickname misspelled as THUDNER.

Even for an NBA 2K13 soundtrack curated by Jay-Z himself, the butchery of Puff Daddy's "Victory," was to be expected. That track contains four N-words, eight F-words and nine S-words, and this is a game played by 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds.