NBA 2K10

Review from Cav, Cav, Cav, Cav, Cav and Cav - Tuesday, 10 November 2009 @ 2:06am

This is my first venture into the 2K series of basketball games and this one gave me eyegasms as it contains a mother lode of pretty. When the wife walked through the front door, looked into the lounge room and asked “Why are you watching baskeball? You haven’t watched that in years!”, it confirmed the fact that 2K have got a pretty firm grip on what a basketball game should look like. I thought the fanfare, lights and Pyros the WWE had was a spectacle, but the pre game and half time shows are amazing and this is well displayed in game. Now I am little behind on who’s who in the NBA zoo and although I have about three shoeboxes of basketball cards in my cupboard, along with three folders that include such things as NBA2K10 Cover Star Kobe Bryant rookie and insert cards, but that’s about how up to date I am with the NBA, so only a few of the faces seem familiar to me. But, the ones that appear in the game that I do know, bare a striking resemblance to their real life counterparts, not only in their appearance, but the way they move on the court too. Tall centres no longer have the speed of Point Guards and Point Guards can’t block.

Another good look for the game is the crowd. Fans of any sports games (wrestling included), will know the there is nothing worse than seeing the same guy in the same shirt in the second seat from the left every three rows. That’s not happening here. There are people going to the bathroom/concession stand and that guy only appears oncew every section. It is much improved and very welcome.

Another huge plus is the commentary. The announcers play off each really well and tend to drone on with stats and the like, just as if you were watching a telecast.

The one thing I did feel with NBA2K10, is that I struggled to simply pick up the game and play it. I believe that this genre has really become one for the hardcore bball fans. I suppose this is due to the fact that I played way too much NBA Jam and driving to the hoop is just my thing. (RANDOM FACT: Did you know that you could only insert a maximum for 50 credits into an NBA Jam machine?) Controls are a hell of a lot more than they used to be, too. I don’t think there is a button on the controller that isn’t used in one way or another. I must be old as I only ever remember shoot, pass and turbo. I scouted the internets to see if I could find some tips on how to improve my game.... but all I came across was a massive list of improvements that the fans thought could be made to the game:

Miscellaneous

Autosave Settings and Association- Coach, Camera, Online, etc.

Fix Shot Stick - Shot Releases -> If you hold it, increases shot %

Scrolling DPad directions with On the Fly Coaching is way too fast

Add Custom Soundtracks PS3

CPU Sliders get translated to Home Away USER USER Match-up

Heat stats (D-Pad UP) shots made/shots attempted instead of %

Saving replay crashes PS3

Not enough time to follow in-game play director

Gameplay

Pick and Roll physics

Defensive Assist needs toning down

Tone down lead pass in lane / Defensive Awareness in Lane needs increase

Players Stopping on Fast Break Passes

Too many Alley-oops in Traffic

Referee inbound issues – passes between refs or doesn’t pass at all

Stepping backwards from three point line when setting up on a pass

Fix charges - backwards and backcourt charges need to be eliminated

Shooting percentages too high

Way too easy to create defensive openings with ball movement

Stuck animations on play calls, animations will show up in next possession

Too much cherry picking

Timeouts subtract weirdly and then come back...

Sometimes a made dunk will seem like it never happened

Zone Defense Spacing

Tone down offensive rebounding on free throws

Camera on first free throw shot is often weird

Walk The Dog is Glitchy

Lack of force field on out of bounds

Back Court is too easy to have happen

More contact in paint

Assist window lasts too long

Cut down on Auto-post up

Ease of PF and C Dribbling

Intentional Fouls not registering / passing through them

Substitutions made at end of quarter don't translate to next quarter, same team comes out from end of last quarter

Offensive 3 seconds needs to be looked at, often not called

Energy is not being re-gathered by Time-outs with My Player

Inbounding to Center causes a turnover

Isomotion needs to be more responsive and variety

Too many missed close shots

Not enough Perimeter fouls called

Passing too easy through middle of court (sideline to sideline)

Allow for walking the ball up

Missing easy catches

Slow real-life Bigs play defense too well on perimeter

Overhead passes need to be turned down

Is the 360 dunk working?

Triple Threat ISO issues – Jab step versus starting dribbling animation

AI

Only PG will bring up ball

AI in terms of 24 second clock and end of game… no urgency, or sometimes shoot early in 24-clock

Too many AI Jump Passes

More players need to drive lane / Shot type tendencies wonky

Online

Team-Up 5 player slot bug

Association online freezing

Increase Online Difficulty Level or Create Ranked Lobby Tiers

Show Opponents Stats in Ranked Games

Difficult to sub people in online, rapid d-pad scrolling

Option to turn off fatigue online

Freezing with 2K Share, Who's Online, Team Up

Can we implement Gold Leaderboard?

Changing Coach Settings Causes Freezing in Online Ranked Games

My Player

My Player Duplication

My Player/Association Developmental Drills Glitch

My Player Minutes

My Player Pick-UP Games Drop Connection - NEEDS TO WORK

5th game freeze during summer circuit in My Player

Retired Player Jerseys in My Player

Editing tendencies does not add up to 100

Hold Ball Too Long is too short of a period, especially for a PG

My Player Shooting on same basket after halftime

Exporting created players makes them become generic

Subs in My Player in rapid succession and at extremely wrong position

Foul outs in My Player mode wonky

Presentation

FRAMERATE - End of Quarter/Timeouts, Certain Stadiums

PS3 Freeze in T-Mobile and Keys of Game Loading Screens

Broadcast Camera in My Player

Headbands going with home/team colors instead of custom

Clipping on the Dunk Contest

NBA Today Overlays stick on screen too long sometimes

Color red is off in game

Increase Playoff Atmosphere

Signature celebrations for players that don’t start game is some generic player

Overlays getting cut off by other overlays

LeBron Chalk Toss is wonky

Delay in block animation

Graphical deterioation as game goes along (?)

Rows of fans in open spaces (Check NJ's court)

In-Game Sound not working with optical cable unless switching to HDMI sound

Only have button to cut off post-basket celebration animations and not inbound of ball

Camera hangs after conclusion of a game

Speed up two hands animation

Amp up crowd noise/atmosphere

Association

Morale Attribute in Association is too strong

Contracts in Association to Large - Sit in Free Agency

10 Day Contracts not registering

When I came across this list of fixes and wants I said to myself “What the hell does half of this mean?” After scratching my head for a while, my next (and more fitting) question was “If this is what’s wrong with the game, why in God’s name was this game ever released?” Do they not use people who actually enjoy basketball games as their testers? This is way too much of an uproar for a game that has just been released. And why should I waste my download on this patch? I am a console gamer and I wanna use my internet downloads for online play, demos and DLC. This just goes to show where we get screwed as an Australian Market with both the price of our internet and the price of games only to be then confronted by having to download patches.

Now that we know what the people think, I’ll tell you what I think:

Yeah it’s pretty but it really doesn’t play well.

I could have two talls under the basket and still not manage a rebound. Wassupwitdat?

When there is an out of bounds it takes ages to get back into the action.

I really think you should have to press a button to start the next quarter as it’s really disappointing to come back from the bathroom to find out that your six point deficit has tripled.

I like the idea of live rosters, but if your favourite player shatters his ankle in 27 places in an unfortunate post game party, old school break dancing accident, well you’re stuck with that third round draft pick from Lithuania, with that name that looks like someone dropped a Scrabble set.

Create a player is pretty cool, but I couldn’t manage to get my player not to look like and extremely pale African American. But you wouldn’t expect me to have ‘mad bball skills’ anyway, so maybe this is a good thing.

Career for My Player didn’t excite me. Why do I have to start in a Summer League? And who the hell is this guy telling me how shit I am. I know I am shit. If I wasn’t I would be playing in the NBA not some crappy Summer League!

Using the thumbstick for the free throws is a great touch and it takes an even greater touch to find the sweet spot when executing a shot from the charity stripe. Well done.

Creating your own relay tape and sharing it with friends is great too. It’s a damn shame the only footage I have is my created player getting dunked upon.

Offline Multiplayer goes well, but online seems a bit laggy. Chalk that up as another ‘Living in Australia’ bonus.

Summary

If 2KGames can keep the players happy by attending to their list of gripes, they may just find themselves uncovering a goldmine when 2K11 comes around.... but they must get it right the first time and not rely on patches and updates. This one wasn't really for me and loses the battle for 2010 against it's EA rival on my scorecard.

Pros

You guessed it, the game is visually brilliant - Nice Free Throw Action - Connection to Live NBA stats is a good feature - Making a replay tape is cool

Cons

Heaps of controls to remember - Dragging Career mode - Apparently a truck load of problems, according to the masses