NHL 2K10 (Xbox 360)

Still playing second fiddle to EA Sports
9/21/2009 5:42 PM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 1

NHL 2K10 has a lot going for it: It's very pretty, sports a fairly robust franchise mode, works extremely well online, and has enough new features to make upgrading worthwhile.

Yet it's still a tough sell, because EA's NHL 10 is simply the better game.

That doesn't mean NHL 2K10 isn't better in certain areas -- its franchise mode is superior to EA's Be a GM mode, and the player ratings make a hell of a lot more sense.

But it's still not enough. Part of the game's problem is that, out of the box, it's a complete mess. The goalies are useless; the AI is awful; the skating feels like the players are pushing through sand. It's a waste of time. The saving grace is that, after you dig around inside the game's many setting menus and tweak certain gameplay areas -- such as player and puck friction, goalie ability, aggressiveness, speed, speed burst, etc. -- you can get NHL 2K10 to play a very good game of hockey.

But why do we have to do this every year?

This continues to be a huge frustration with 2K Sports games as a whole. There are good games buried inside the initial nonsense, but why must we waste all this time changing everything? In what hockey universe is a 12-9 game fun? At what point is it just silly? I sat in on a conference call with the 2K10 design team a few weeks ago. All that was stressed was "realism" -- accurate player ratings, physics, AI and so on -- and then the game on default settings plays like afternoon pond hockey. It's maddening.

If you're willing to put in the time to tweak all of the settings, or do a trial-and-error run and use the "2K Share" feature to try out someone else's, then you will be rewarded. The AI plays sound positional hockey, goalies behave more rationally, and yet you can score from a wide variety of locations. The game has a nice, organic feel and is a heck of a lot of fun. But 2K sure does make you work for it.

However, there still remain several problem areas, most of which are not terribly vital to the package but are annoying nonetheless. The sound is very generic. The crowd reactions are dull, and the play-by-play is emotionless and boring. The control, which is notably better than in years past, still isn't as tight as that in EA's game. Pulling off a manual "deke" on a goalie remains almost impossible, making a breakaway basically just a luck shot. And the skating model, even after making the necessary tweaks to the friction settings, feels off. When your skating model is off, it drags down the rest of the game.

There is one last complaint -- this one much more important. The game has a tendency to lock up on faceoffs, though it doesn't appear to have a pattern. You may play 20 games and not see it, but your next three might all freeze in the third period, requiring a console reboot. This alone is reason enough to avoid a $50 purchase.

Even being $10 less than EA's game, NHL 2K10 is the ideal "rent first" prospect. There really is a good game in here begging to get out. The problem is, most won't have the patience to find it.

This review is based on a retail copy of the Xbox 360 game provided by the publisher.