Dispatches from the front lines of 2K10

I'm concerned my previous post may not have conveyed an accurate impression of how, for lack of a better term, stunning the 2K10 experience is. Yesterday I watched my co-blogger try to create a team and franchise.

One of the first things we noticed while looking through the players' stats was that in the Finnish version, goaltenders have two stats called "speed". For example, Henrik Lundqvist has a speed of 88 and a speed of 60. Of course, it's a longstanding 2K tradition to not explain these stats at all, so you don't know what they actually mean. Besides, as far as we can tell, most of them mean absolutely nothing. So far, though, at least they had different names.

We could check what they are in English, but that would require quitting the game, changing the Locale of our console to the UK, and restarting the game. We're not that interested. Overall, the translation quality is poor; in Franchise mode, each team is marked as either rebuilding, buying, selling and so forth. We're guessing that in English, this was called "Team State", because the Finnish version has "Joukkueen osavaltio"; that's state as in Missouri.

Also, looking at stats too closely is hazardous. There's a menu where you can look through the free agents and players on different teams, and select them for your team. If you look at someone's player card, when you close it the game has unsorted the lists and always returns you to the Anaheim list, regardless of whose player card you were looking at. I've rarely seen anything so brainless.

As an aside, 2K claim that there are more customization options than ever. In team creation mode, there are less than in previous 2K games, so we're not sold on that, either. There are lots of customization options we don't understand, though, because again, there is no online help, and the manual doesn't even tell you what the controls are, let alone explain anything more complicated.

If you look at your match results, you get a table that tells you what games you've played and the results. For example, 11th of March, so-and-so o'clock: Washington @ Calgary, 2-4, winner: Washington. Now read that again. Yes, it says Washington scored two goals against Calgary, and won the game. In fact, the Caps scored four, so the result is right, but the numbers are wrong.

Rather surprisingly, there were no penalties called in that game. It turns out that was because the "Penalties" setting had changed from "on" to "off" on its own accord before the game. The last time we saw it, it said "on"; no penalties were called, and after the game, we found the setting was "off". The difficulty level also switches between Amateur and Pro, seemingly at random.

Also, the offside bug I mentioned in the previous post (where one of your players gets stuck in the offensive zone and won't come out), has so far recurred on average once per game. That's playtesting.

Founding a franchise was also harder than we thought. In previous 2K games, you could create your own team and replace an NHL team with it, with no trouble at all. In this game, sure, you can create a team. You pick players from either other teams' rosters or the free agent list, and you can enter your created team in the league. Here's the catch: you don't actually move players to the new team, you copy them. So if you pick a free agent for your team, let's say Peter Forsberg, for your team, and start the season, Forsberg has been copied onto your team; when the season starts, there's one Peter Forsberg on your team and another on the free agent list.

Not only is this unthinkably stupid, but it's just another example of 2K taking something that worked fine in the previous editions of the game and breaking it. The hopelessly confusing menu system is another example. In my opinion, the menus and overall presentation in general has just gotten more and more confusing over the years. The 2K5 and 2K6 menus weren't pretty, nor was the franchise management system, but they were infinitely less confusing.

One of the big problems 2K always had is that your players are idiots. You control one player on the ice, and the rest of them shamble around brainlessly. Despite what the promotional materials say about "intelligent hockey", this is still the case. I've never been able to understand what exactly it is your players are trying to do. When your defenseman has the puck and passes it forward, the winger or centerman is almost invariably facing your own goal. On the power play, both wingers hang around the halfwall, effectively guaranteeing you're not going to be able to set up a one-timer. Overall your forwards seem to be doing their best to not get open. This is "intelligent" as in "design", exactly like the previous 2K games.

You do get to choose from several different power play tactics. They don't explain what any of them are, beyond a name, and if previous 2K games are anything to judge by, they don't actually do anything.

**

The overall impression 2K10 gives is just shocking. I should stress that I've played 2K3, and 2K5, 6, 8 and 9 extensively, and my co-blogger has much greater experience of console hockey in general and 2K in particular. With this background, we find 2K10 hopelessly confusing, have trouble figuring out what the controls are, and find the menus nearly impossible to navigate, let alone make sense of. I can only imagine what it must be like if this is someone's first experience of NHL 2K.

We're simply shocked that a game like this is released. Again, the gameplay itself isn't hopeless, it's just almost exactly the same as 2K9. And 2K8. And 2K7, 2K6 and 2K5. And the menus, the franchise management, the fact you can't pick the language, the total lack of any kind of online help or manual, the tired commentary with lines that were written for 2K5... Popping this game into your XBox is a confusing, frustrating, horrible experience. In almost every way, this is worse than NHL 2K9. I reiterate: don't get it. Just don't.

This is the last NHL 2K game we're getting. Playing it has been a horrid experience. As soon as we get over the psychological trauma, we'll be getting EA's NHL 10.