Game review: NHL 2K10

I think this is probably the most awful XBox 360 game I've ever played.

The initial impression is, to say the least, dramatic. For a long time, hockey games sold in Finland have come with several language options. This one, too, has English, Swedish and Finnish. Once you pop the game in, you learn that it automatically sets the language to your Xbox's "Locale" setting, and you cannot change it. So if you play 2K10 on any console in Finland, it's going to be in Finnish, and you can't change it in-game. The only way to get English menus is to change your console's locale to the UK or USA; the console's separate language setting doesn't matter. So sorry about that if you're, say, Finnish-Swedish, or a foreigner living in Finland. Our XBox is set to Locale: Finland and Language: English. That gets you a Finnish-language game, and let me re-iterate, you cannot change the in-game language in-game.

This is so shockingly idiotic we couldn't wrap our minds around it. We spent at least ten minutes looking through the confusing Finnish-language menus, trying to find a language option. The menus themselves are thoroughly confusing. When the game starts, you're thrown into a screen where you can start a random NHL game. If you want to get to the main menu, you have to move the right stick to get to a really confusing pop-up menu. You have no choice but to browse them aimlessly, because there is no on-line help, and the manual only explains the controls.

Wait, did I say the manual explains the controls? It doesn't. Some years back, both EA and 2K started using the "Skill Stick", which means using the right thumbstick to basically control your player's hockey stick. 2K10's "Pro" controls use the Skill Stick, so all the manual tells you is that the right stick is "Skill Stick". It doesn't tell you, um, how to use it. Or what it does when you, say, push up on the thumbstick. And again, there is no online help (or if there is, we can't find it).

So interfacewise, we can't work out how to play the game properly, because it won't tell us. No matter, I gave it a shot anyway. The box advertises "intelligent hockey", and sure enough, when your opponent is on the power play, for the first time in NHL 2K history, it actually kind of looks like they're trying to play an NHL power play. Other than that, though, I've seen few signs of it.

The AI opponent's ineptitude was only one failure of intelligence in previous 2K games: far more frustrating was your own players' utter stupidity. I'm unhappy to report that that, at least, hasn't changed a bit. While the AI plays the aforementioned power play, your own players are content to stand around in their penalty kill formation, and ignore everything that happens around them. So in short, they're still the brainless position-playing zombies they were in all the previous installments of 2K.

In the offensive zone, your players are just as moronic. To set the scene, I watched the Tampa Bay-Montréal game a few nights back. Montréal scored three goals (IIRC) on backdoor plays, i.e. where the player with the puck passes to the other side of the net. Just try setting one up in 2K10! If the player with the puck is somewhere between the net and the faceoff dot, most of the time the other forwards are either behind the net or out behind the faceoff circle. You simply cannot execute perhaps the most basic scoring play in modern hockey, because the AI-controlled players on your own team play like idiots. Not that you can usually pass to anyone, really, because I've never yet seen a player even try to get open, much less into a scoring position. Nothing makes you really believe Alex Ovechkin is on the ice like seeing him aimlessly wandering around behind the net on the power play when the puck is in front of it.

In most other respects, too, the gameplay feels identical to 2K6, 7, 8 and 9. Your players, from Ovechkin to Brooks Laich, all feel totally and identically incompetent. Even the simplest action takes ages to execute, and it feels like everyone is skating in tar. Nothing they do feels or looks like NHL hockey.

Add to this the build quality we've come to expect from 2K games. In every game we've played so far, at least one forward has gotten inexplicably stuck in the offensive zone, causing an offside. They face the boards and stand there, shaking, until they either snap out of it or the offside is called. The commentators are using exactly the same lines as they were in, um, 2K5, and in the first game I played, the commentary consistently failed, calling a 5-on-3 goal a 4-on-4 and similar dumb mistakes.

So in short, this is an awful game. We bought in on sale for a ridiculously low price, but it wasn't worth it. Just don't get it. There's very little discernible improvement over 2K9 or 2K8, and in many ways, this seems to be much worse. I'm starting to think the high-point of 2K games was 2K5, and if you've played it, you realize how pathetic that is.

2/10, only because I have faith that there are even worse games out there.