I never pushed it as "the greatest thing ever", don't even try and play that game. I gave an honest appraisal based on my personal experience of the game, which in my eyes in improved in gameplay over the past five years. You certainly are entitled to your opinion.
The facts are clear as day when it comes to a new generation sports game, the first one is always stripped down. Always. Look to your Maddens, NBA 2Ks, UFCs, all of them are "stripped down". The truth of the the matter is that if you look at it, the game isn't at all stripped down, since none of the modes existed in the first place on next gen. It's not a matter of straight copying and pasting the engine (notice I used the word engine, not animations. Animations does not equal engine.) from 360/PS3 to PS4/XB1. What we have here is a new engine, somewhat based off the old engine, minus a great deal of the legacy bugs that have been pissing fans off for years.
If you expected something creation-wise on par with the previous years, you certainly can be disappointed. I'm not, since I knew all of this stuff a month in advance (NDA rules.) and have come to accept that this is a foundation for future years. Gameplay wise, for me, I've enjoyed what little I've played (I have yet to receive my full copy of current gen 2K15), and know that it's a step in the right direction. You can also cart out your "same old stuff" cliche all you want, animations wise, for the most part you're dead on about, but as I've mentioned time and time again, 2K (or any developer worth a shit) won't get rid of animations that work.
Just be thankful for what is essentially a reboot, you're not saddled with a f*cking turd like TNA Imapct (Which had at least 2 years more development time than this.).
EDIT: I'm not going to say much more than that until my review goes up, which at this rate should be up around Wednesday/Thursday since I haven't got a copy yet. (Not that it really matters, since you've already made up your minds about it.)