NBA 2K10 Review (Oct. 6th release date)

Was lucky enough to be invited to the NBA 2K10 release party in New York City last week, as a party favor; all guest received a copy of the game much to my delight. Along with getting to hang with Wilson Chandler and Nate Robinson (also the less memorable rapper, Wale) the free booze and the exclusiveness revolving around my favorite game made for a memorable evening.

Now on to the game content. When I arrived home, I loaded it up and realized I was only able to play the computer for a few days which is why I delayed posting my own review. Once I was finally able to play another human both on xbox live as well as side by side, I got a better feel for the improvements. I'm still a youngin at this new game despite my #2 overall ranking out of 12 other people who also received an early copy of the game.

Let's start with the good things. First and foremost, this game is not nearly as easy as 2k9 was. Attempt to apply some of your old shenanigans and you will be penalized. Too many spin moves; results in a charge, too many alternate 'a' crossovers results in a loss of handle and a turnover, too many arcade game jump passes now results in a pass back court or out of bounds at an even more frequent rate than last year's game. Pre game rituals are amazingly accurate. Lebron's famous chalk throw, all the Celtics handshakes and KG banging his chest to the baseline crowd. The details, as expected are impeccable, all the way from Kobe's under armour to the facial expressions he makes given the game situation. I recommend playing the game in the highest form of HD possible in order to appreciate the realness of the game, the rims look clear enough to feel like you're in the gym. Once the online play picks up a bit more, i'll be able to give you more but for now these are positive things I noticed. Cool game intros as well as a less annoying soundtrack are also positives in my book. Lastly, the horrible timeout glitch is gone. Now all timeouts are charged to you no matter how you call them.

Now being the critique and sore loser I am, here are the negatives. (writing this review right after a bad loss to some dude using the Lakers, probably a 9 year old kid but whatever) Fast break strip; one of the worst aspects of 2k9 by far. On a fast break and the defending player comes from behind and strips the ball off your knee and out of bounds. Seemingly the frequency of this happening is heavily increased. Unlike NBA Live, 2ksports was never able to grasp the concept of a fluid working freestyle control system. 2k10 freestyle is still very iffy and hard to control making it pretty much impossible to get around a computer controlled defender. The goal tending game bug is still very prevalent also, it's extremely aggravating and all gamers know exactly what I am talking about. One thing I found very annoying is the game is missing one of it's sound effects. Now when you make a block or slap the ball away, there is no sound whatsoever. Sometimes while looking for a cutting player down the lane, little did I know that the ball had been swiped away from me. Same thing with blocked shots, no sound at all. Not sure what the intentions were in changing that around. One of the 'new' game bugs was while I was trying to inbound the ball, my player continued to throw the ball back to the ref, this went on for about 20 seconds until I had to burn one of my timeouts. Once play resumed I was able to inbound the ball again. Again on the inbounding subject, during online play, I was unable to inbound the ball at all and was charged with a 5 second inbounding violation, this bug existed last year also. Hopefully a few patches will come out that prevent this from happening.

Just something I noticed on the neutral side of this critique is the players appear to but significantly smaller than they were in 2k9, we'll see how that plays out. The fatigue ratings have changed majorly also. This may be good and it may be a little over the top. On the good side, no more using only 5 guys to run or you the whole game. Holding down turbo really wears down your players and hurts their performance. On the bad side, I found this to be a little too quick. In the first quarter I had a fast break dunk and held down turbo in order to not get caught and stripped from behind resulting in a turnover, while running back on D, my player had the Gatorade cup icon and needed to get a rest. Again this was the first quarter.

I'll add to this as time passes by, just wanted to get an early review out there for all you potential buyers. Overall I definitely recommend getting this game.

NYKnicksBeat.net Game Ratings:

Appearence/Detail/Graphics-9.5
Gameplay-7.5
Soundtrack-7
Game bugs-several
Online Lobby-average (still can't see ratings of an opponent before deciding to play them)
New Features Overall-7.5