Review: NBA 2K10

For many years now the NBA 2K series has been the king of the hardwood. Sure there have been other basketball games released but none of them have come close the quality and gameplay seen every year from 2K Sports. One of the hardest things NBA 2K has to deal with every year are the expectations from the fans and it wasn’t about to change this year with NBA 2K10. 2K Sports was hoping to meet expectations by improving on their winning formula while adding brand new modes like My Player. While some of these modes are great additions, NBA 2K10 is full of framerate issues, crashes, server issues and other annoying bugs that ultimately make it a poor basketball experience. It makes me wonder how the game passed testing and how 2K Sports was so careless to allow this series to fall so far from greatness.

One area that basketball fans always liked about the 2K series was the gameplay. This year the gameplay has been tweaked just a bit but remains pretty much the same. It’s a good combination between a fast paced game and a slow paced half court style, much like how basketball is played. You can choose to play a run and gun offense or you can choose to play half court offense. Playing a half court offense is pretty easy this year because there are so many post-up moves it’s hard to not dump it in the paint every time. This is a bit of an issue, not only does the framerate drop every time the ball gets into the paint but AI defenders seem to have a very hard time defending post-up moves. Shooting has always been something that takes time to learn but it works much better than any other basketball title. Dribbling is an aspect which I don’t really enjoy in the 2K series. Although it looks really nice, all the moves are done using the left trigger and the left stick. Often times I didn’t feel like I was pulling off the moves or had complete control of them, unlike NBA Live 10 where everything is controlled by the right stick. The gameplay in NBA 2K10 is amazingly realistic with the occasional “video game” moments. Framerate issues and the ease of scoring in the paint aside the gameplay is the best that you can get if you are looking for a realistic basketball experience.

One thing that NBA Live 10 lacked was the variety of game modes, something 2K10 certainly does not. This year they added a new mode called My Player, think EA’s Be a Pro mode. This mode allows you to take a created player through summer camp, training camp, the D-League and ultimately to the NBA. The customization of the character is truly amazing. There are tons of shoes, equipment, hair styles and even tons of shot styles to choose from. You can pick between a variety of positions with specific roles like a pass first point guard or a defensive center. Your attributes will be different depending on the role you pick. Once you finished creating your character you get sent into summer camp. From there you can play some drills to upgrade a particular stat and earn skill points in which you can use to upgrade any stat. This is where the mode takes a turn for the worst.

My Player suffers from framerate issues and a bad player grading system. The actual grading scale, which is displayed during the game, is the reason it takes so long to upgrade a player’s attribute. No matter what position you play, the same things that cause your grade to increase or decrease is weighted the same towards the overall grade. It can take a very long time to go from the starting grade of C to a B+ then all of a sudden your man scores once and you go right down to a B. Not to mention that you don’t even get awarded for scoring unless it is a game tying or go ahead bucket. The penalties seem to be weighted too heavily towards the grading scale which makes it that much tougher than it should be to upgrade your player.

The absolute worst part of My Player is the frame rate. The game chugs all the way through each game you play. This isn’t the case when playing in the summer league and training camp but as soon as you head to the D-League or the NBA the game becomes virtually unplayable. It is a huge disappointment because even with the grading and upgrading issues My Player is still a lot of fun. I found myself investing a lot of time into the mode even though the frame rate was horrendous; however it got to the point where the lag, the horrible grading system, the annoying 2K Insider guy all got to me and I just couldn’t go back to playing that mode. With so many other sports titles able to create a great “Superstar” mode, it’s a shame 2K Sports didn’t take a look at those games and try to implement it for 2K10.

Besides the standard Association mode, which is the franchise mode for 2K10, the only other mode I found that worked well was the NBA Today. This is where you can play any of the real life games that are happening on that day. When you jump into those games there is a ton of added commentary in which they talk about the previous games both teams played, they will mention the real stats for almost every player and also talk about upcoming games. Even though this mode isn’t incorporated into a season mode like Dynamic DNA, it’s still fun to play the matchups of your favorite team every day.

Online play has been one of NBA 2K’s strong points in their previous titles. Last year you had the ability to join a custom game with friends and lock onto a certain position, something that was taken out this year. As disappointing and frustrating as this is, the decision to do this was probably due to the addition of My Crew. In this mode you create a team and face other teams in several leagues. Each player on the team will choose a position to play and you can even upload your My Player character to use in the mode. The problem is this mode doesn’t work; by that I mean the server can’t handle it. Getting a game in My Crew is nearly impossible, even with only two people on your team. Other online modes like Pick-up Game might work occasionally but suffers from incredible lag. In Pick-up you can join a game with up to ten people and each gamer will control a player on the court. This mode would be fun if there wasn’t so much lag and you could choose which position to play before the game starts instead of having to get thrown in at a random position. All online modes suffer from constant loss of connection and crashes. Even something so easy like uploading a snapshot or replay video to the 2K website doesn’t work properly. Basically if you want to play a basketball game online you have to choose NBA Live 10. They have similar modes and it doesn’t suffer from frame rate or server issues.

The NBA 2K series will always have excellent graphics and presentation and this year is no different. This is the best looking basketball game both in terms of graphics and player animations. There are some issues with players having no reaction to clutch plays, dunks or a blocked shot which is very unrealistic and is something I hope is addressed next year. Presentation wise, the competition has caught up with 2K but they haven’t been able to capture the true television presentation that NBA 2K10 offers. Commentary, though solid, can always use some work. The crowd usually is pretty good in a 2K sports title but this year I have to say the crowd is only loud during the playoffs and often doesn’t react correctly to some situations.

In the end NBA 2K10 is a technical disaster. With annoying bugs like having to wait for a referee to track down the ball to give it to the player and constant framerate issues, the game is in desperate need of a patch. The online servers are so terrible it causes the game to crash in multiple areas and finding a My Crew game is nearly impossible. The modes added this year are welcome addtions but the only one worth playing right now is the Association mode. It’s a shame that NBA 2K10 has become such an unplayable title because the gameplay, graphics and presentation should make it the best game on the market. With NBA Live 10 looking much better this year and having already received a patch that addressed multiple issues, 2K Sports better step up their game next year. I’m going to assume that there is no way the 2K testers would have let any of these bugs get past them during testing, so the fact that it’s been three weeks after release and a patch has yet to hit our consoles is a terrible sign for this franchise and fans of the series.

Doin It RIGHT: - Great graphics and player animation. - Presentation is as good as always. - NBA Today and My Player are welcome additions.	Doin It RONG: - Multiple Crashes. - Terrible Framerate. - Online modes are unplayable.
FINAL SCORE: 6.5 / 10