NBA 2K10 (Xbox 360)

While still a top-shelf basketball game, 2K's stranglehold on the genre is fading.
10/13/2009 3:09 PM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 2

As of this writing, it's hard to fully evaluate NBA 2K10. So much of this year's game is tied to being online; specifically, being connected to the 2K servers. Since the game was released on Oct. 6, your odds of connecting to those servers are about as good as knocking down a free throw while blindfolded. You might get lucky, but chances are you're going to shoot an air ball. It is absolutely infuriating.

Equally infuriating are the shocking frame-rate issues that you see on the Xbox 360 version when using certain camera angles (the PS3 doesn't suffer from this.) You can tinker so that this goes away, but when the default camera angle is almost unplayable, something is amiss.

NBA 2K10's most touted new feature is NBA Today, which is somewhat similar to NBA Live 10's Dynamic Season mode. NBA Today downloads the current data from the league and plugs it into your game. The play-by-play will comment on the previous day's games; the stat overlays will be up to date -- it's really cool. But of course, you need to be able to connect to the 2K servers to use it.

This is doubly frustrating because offline play against the artificial intelligence is by far the weakest part of the game. The struggles are similar to those in previous versions: Your AI teammates are idiots, especially in how they play defense in the post and rush to double-team anyone who makes a threat at getting to the basket, which leaves their man wide open. The opposing AI is all too eager to accept this opening, even giving up a layup to pass the ball back out to an open man for a three-pointer. It looks as weird as it sounds.

The defensive issues have plagued this game for years -- it's just too easy to score in the paint. Actually, scoring down low isn't the problem; it's too easy to get the ball down low in the first place. If Boston's Kevin Garnett receives the ball within three feet of the rim, chances are good that he's either going to score or get fouled. The defense needs to stop him from getting the ball in an easy scoring position.

Along these same lines, the AI players on both teams refuse to play passing lanes, regardless of how you tweak the game's difficulty sliders. It will drive you absolutely insane to watch an opposing team's point guard throw a lazy pass in the middle of the paint to the center, while no one on your team considers it a good idea to, you know, catch it.