Personally felt 2K11 was the best of the bunch, this generation. 12 and 13 have more features, and offer a greater wealth of content, but both games lack the eminent playability of 11.

Plainly, it's just the least tedious of the three to pick up and run with. 12 is the most tedious. 13 is the middleground.

2K13 is awesome, it's single player mode reminds me of a RPG with Mass Effect style multiple answers at press conferences.

I'm pretty sure all three have that. Honestly, 2K11 was the big leap forward, but since then it's just been small iterations here and there. Some changes were good, some were bad, but really these games are similar enough to each other that it's hard to distinguish one from the rest. I don't necessarily mean that in a pejorative sense, they're all good games. But asking me to pick my favorite post-2K11 basketball game is like asking me to pick my favorite pair of socks. I dunno man, one's as good as another.

I've only played 2k12 and 2k13. To be honest I really prefer 2k12. I think 2k13 is clinically the better game but the changed to the Shot Stick are something I still struggle to adapt to. The new 'VC' points system is better as they accumulate across different game modes (though please, don't micro-transact for them).

2k12 was my first one so that might explain my bias.

Is this really a thread in 2013 referring to 360/PS3 games as "next gen". I thought it was dumb in like '07/'08 when people were still using that term for the current systems, but come on. The PS4 and next Xbox are coming out this year, the term you are looking for is last gen.

I tried to go back and play 12 and my god that game does not hold up, it seems like it was not a big jump to 13 but man it really was.

@ll_Exile_ll I don't consider this generation (360/PS3) last gen until the PS4 and next Xbox has been released. But I agree with you that the term in general is dumb, seeing that PC gaming generations change constantly. Guess I could've said "current gen" but eh, everyone gets the point.

Yeah, I agree with this. Maybe just go with 2k11 if it's the cheapest. 2K11 also happens to be the last one I really loved.

And for the love of god, buy a console version, as the PC ports are... well, quite bad.

2k12 is really good and 2k13 is even better. 2K13 is pretty cheap right now, and you can even get it in the MLB 2k13 / NBA 2k13 combo pack.