Crowd noise is great. You’ll hear the front rowers egging their team on, you’ll hear the crowd erupt when the home team hits a clutch basket, you’ll even hear them chant “MVP” when one of their players who has played really well goes to the charity stripe. Add to this the TV style replays and post-play cuts, and NBA 2K10 has the closest thing to a TV Broadcast you’ll find in a video game anywhere.
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Again, this is not without its issues. Sometimes the overlay stays on the screen too long obstructing your view of the game, and that is especially frustrating when it’s the standings or the upcoming schedule overlay, because they take up almost the whole screen. But, at the risk of sounding like I’m beating a dead horse, this has been fixed in the patch.
The game modes haven’t changed much, save for one (we’ll get to that shortly). The two modes that you’ll likely spent the most time on are the Association and the new My Player modes. The Association is NBA 2K’s Franchise mode, and it’s excellent as always. Its already incredible depth was increased further with the new NBDL integration, and now you have to develop your young players properly and give them good minutes, or they won’t progress. Apart from that, there’s nothing new to write home about, apart from the aforementioned NBA Today making the overall experience better.
The game’s biggest addition is also its best. My Player is 2K10’s RPG component, and it is by far the most addictive mode in a sports game ever. You create a player, choose a position and play style, and partake in the uphill struggle to become an NBA pro. At first, you take part in the Summer League. If you impress a few people, you’re invited to an NBA training camp and if you perform well enough there, you make the step up to the NBA. If not, you’re sent down to the D-League to hone your skills before you eventually get a call-up.
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When I said uphill struggle, I meant it. My Player is incredibly challenging, especially in the early stages, because your player is terrible. Not “not as good as an all star”, but downright horrible. He’s comfortably the worst player in the game’s world when you start, with his overall sitting pretty at a paltry 40. You can improve him by playing well in the games, completing objectives and milestones, and accumulating Skill Points, a la XP. And believe me, it takes ages to get your player to a good enough level.
What makes this mode good is how much of a hand-in-glove fit it is to the game of basketball. You’re one of only 10 people on the court at any given time, and you are heavily involved in every play, be it offence or defence (man-marking). The rating you receive is a “team-mate grade” that changes with every action you make on the court. Of course, this includes taking good shots, making good passes, dishing out assists and getting rebounds. However, this game rewards you for being a good team-mate. The little things that a casual wouldn’t notice, like boxing out, challenging shots and setting screens, are rewarded too. This is in stark contrast to the individualist tendencies of a sport video gamer.
The game does penalise you for the stupidest of things, however. It’ll mark you negatively for “holding on to the ball too long”, which is ridiculous when you’re a point guard bringing the ball up the court and holding on to it while the team sets up its offence. Also, regardless of how good you are, it is stupid to expect you to hold Bryant to 10 points in a game. That really doesn’t take anything away from the overall experience of the mode, though.
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What’s surprising is the amount of depth this mode has. Unlike FIFA’s Be A Pro, where no player transactions happen, the NBA GMs will trade merrily, like usual. For example, my Mavs GM traded Josh Howard for Kevin Martin, and signed Big Z from free agency, which was really smart because we didn’t have a good Center. I can’t wait for the off-season when Kidd retires (I forced him into it by taking his starter spot), and Dampier and Dirk’s contracts expire. I wonder what kind of moves the GM will make. When a sports game mode builds up this kind of anticipation in you, instead of getting stale after a few weeks, it’s a very good thing.
Unlike everything else though, this mode was completely broken pre-patch. You couldn’t set the number of minutes each quarter had, which completely skewered the stats against you, because the rest of the league was playing 12 minutes a quarter, while you were playing 5! Also, there was a clone glitch where your player would get cloned and halve your stats when you switched teams, and the small matter of the game freezing during off-season. Seriously, these things should’ve been tested beforehand, considering it was a new feature.
The game has a function where you can crew up with different players and form a team with your My Players, which is a lot like the clan systems in FPS games. You then take on other crews and rise in rank, as you accumulate wins. However, the other parts of the online component aren’t very good. You can’t use custom sliders online, which means ranked games will be full of “cheesers” as the 2K community calls it, who just score in the paint all day. And that’s if you actually connect to someone, what with the netcode being as terrible as it is.
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Other things include the menu, which while giving the system the overhaul it needed came with the side-effect of being ugly as hell, and the soundtrack which is very serviceable, even to non hip-hop fans.
Conclusion
NBA 2K10 is a really fun game to play, with immense replay value thanks to the Association and My Player modes. However, it is a let down because of the potential it had of being the best sports game ever (it still makes a very strong case when patched and used with custom sliders). Out of the box though, it is nothing but a rushed and untested game with a couple of nice ideas. And in a country like India, where the majority of gamers are PC users (where the patch is still in development with no date of release set), or people who don’t have their consoles hooked up the net, that really doesn’t cut it.
(+) Fantastic presentation, almost TV Broadcast quality
(+) Incredibly deep Association and My Player modes
(+) Still the most realistic sim experience around when patched and used with custom sliders
(-) Buggy as hell out of the box
(-) Below-par online component
(-) Ugly menus
Title: NBA 2K10
Developer/Publisher: 2K Sports
Genre: Sports
Rating: 3+
Platforms: PS3 (Rs 2,499), Xbox 360 (Rs 2,499), PC (Rs 699)
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