Here are the answers to about 60 questions submitted on the forums. A handful were left off due to repeats, answers already being provided, or dealing with online play (which I haven’t been able to dig into in this preview copy). Otherwise, nearly every question should be answered.

Q: Can you play Franchise using Single Player Full Lock?
You can play full lock on any position, including goalie. This is saved in your user profile so it works regardless of which mode you’re playing.

Q: Are the controls customizable?
You can choose from 3 control types (Classic, Standard, and Pro; more info, including screenshots, here), but it doesn’t appear you can set/swap individual buttons.

Q: What is your honest opinion of how the game plays as a realistic hockey sim?
From my limited time with it, I think it plays a very realistic sim game. Especially after adjusting just a handful of the plethora of sliders, which definitely work and make a visible difference, I believe the game just has a realistic “flow” to the gameplay.

Q: Do players and teams really play close to how they do in real life?
It’s hard to say as I’ve only played a handful of games and have been messing around with settings and options as much as taking everything in.  But I can feel a difference between a star and a scrub, and all the teams have a full array of varying strategies which really seem to work as advertised.  So if one team can be set to be passive and dump the puck a lot while another is set to more aggressive, it’s pretty safe to say they will (or at least can) play like they do in real life.

One would have to play more games than I have, and/or take a look at the strategies to really get a feel for the teams.  In terms of skating, puckhandling and creativity, you can definitely tell when you have a player that can do “more” with the puck, compared to a scrub who is more likely to lose it.

Q: Is there the same Hybrid control as last year?
This year’s Hybrid is the “Standard” control scheme — a mix of the Classic button layout + Pro Stick (right analog stick sweeping, deking, and shooting if you choose).  So you can play with the old-school buttons, including passing and shooting, but then opt to use the R-stick to deke and shoot, for example, on a breakaway.

Q:  How does the game “feel” compared to 2K9 (or even 2K8)? To be clear, how are the controls and do they translate well to the on ice action (skating, dekeing, etc).
You definitely have much more control over your player than in 2K9.  There is some jerky animation here or there, and some movements that appear very much tied to settings/sliders (e.g. I think I’ve found that sudden movements when receiving the puck may be tied to acceleration; drop the acceleration slider and it’s much smoother)… but I find it very easy to control.

Q: If you’ve had time to mess around with them, how are the settings? Like, is it difficult to adjust the game to your liking; do you need to guess at what a slider does or is the description sufficiently detailed (and correct) for you to simply go in, change a slider or two and then go back into the game and notice a difference in the area you adjusted?
The sliders are VERY responsive this year.  I experimented with speed burst right off the bat.  When you drop the speed burst length to zero, you can only speed burst for an instant and your meter runs out right away.  Set it high and you can speed burst for long periods of time as your meter decreases slowly. Set recovery high and your meter recharges very quickly so you can speed burst again; set recovery low (or try zero) and it takes a LONG time to recharge your meter (making for an interesting setup of going all-out, but then slowly having to “catch your breath” before you can go all-out again).

If you set hitting amount and effectiveness to zero, there’s almost no hitting at all — quite possibly zero big hits in a period.  Boost those sliders and you’ll see guys get hit all over the place.  The difference between the highs and lows on almost all the sliders is immediately noticeable.

Here’s a quick look at NHL 2K10’s controls.

- Goalie Control = Off / Manual / Crease

- Player Lock = Semi-Manual (standard always-control-the-puck-carrier method) / Manual (sort of a half-lock where you can pass the puck but retain control of your original player instead of changing into the recipient; the carrier would be CPU controlled and can pass back to you or take it on his own, unless you press the button again to change into him) / Full Lock (any position, including goalie).

- If you combine Goalie Control set to Manual/Crease with Full Goalie Lock and the Goalie View Camera (or any cam, really; this one is just for goalies), you can play the game as the goalie. Manual is in real time, while Crease is 2K’s slow-motion mode with a green/red vision cone. Your choice.

- Pass Aim Assist = 0 to 100, where 0 is fully directional passing with no CPU guidance, and 100 is full CPU assistance on pass aiming

- Line changes and strategies are on the D-pad. Pressing left and right bring up your offensive and defensive strategies. D-pad UP brings up your offensive lines, then you press a face button to select which one. A = 1st line, B = 2nd, X = 3rd, Y = 4th. D-pad DOWN is for defense. So you no longer cycle through the lines listed on screen. Simply press UP then X, and your third line is immediately selected. DOWN then A and your top defensive pairing heads out. It has a nice feel to it.

- There are three control sets — Classic (all button controls, old-school with the speed burst on the right trigger), Standard (button controls with the addition of Pro Stick and Stick Sweep; sort of a hybrid), and PRO (very much like EA’s control scheme with a few variations). Check out the screenshots for the Pro control layout.

Pro Controls w/ the Puck

Pro Controls w/o the Puck

Goalie Controls

We’ll have more, including video, soon.

Getting used to NHL 2K10’s new menu system took me a few minutes. There is now a layered menu (called “2K Nav”) that you bring up with your right analog stick.  It overlays whatever you’re doing with 9 quadrants of the screen; the middle box returns you to the previous page while the surrounding 8 represent each branching menu item.

Being used to a standard “list” menu, at first it was a little tricky finding a few options (remember, the Arena Music is under Options > Features > 2K Beats!) but after playing for a little while I was zipping around just fine.  The same applies to the menu in franchise mode — once you get used to how the new setup works and where things are layered, finding everything becomes second nature.

The one nice thing about it is you can access the menu instantly, no matter where you are, with basically no load time.  So even in the middle of a game, if you want to quit and go edit something, just pause the game and go to Main Menu.  Because it’s an “overlay”, your paused game just stays in the background while you navigate the menu.  Once you enter another mode you’re prompted that your game will exit, and 2 seconds later you’re at your destination.  If you download the NBA 2K10 Draft Combine from Xbox Live or PSN, you can get a mini idea of what it’s like.

Definitely dig around when you first get the game to get a feel for what’s nested under each quadrant. In doing so, I happened upon a number of new options and features you might appreciate:

• 2K Share lets you download files uploaded by other players.  The things you can upload are rosters, draft classes, gameplay sliders, and “Player DNA” (individual created players).  It will be interesting to see how this pans out with community-contributed content.
• Strategies can be changed individually for all teams and for each individual line on every team, if you so choose to edit them.  The defense, forecheck, backcheck, and breakout have the same options as past years.  But this year you can also set:
  - Attack (Stay Back, Cautioned, Balanced, Aggressive, All Out)
  - Dump & Chase (Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High)
  - PK (Movable Box, Tight Box, Wide Box)
• All sliders are on a universal scale of zero to 100 (and ice friction & puck friction are options for those wondering)
• Faceoff Delay of Game is an option for getting kicked out of too many faceoffs
• The line change/penalty expiration Picture-in-Picture box can be turned off, set to Compact (show the name of the line in large text), or Full (show PIP video of players hopping over the boards and leaving the penalty box)
• The puck carrier’s name, position, number, ability icon, and speed burst meter can all be turned on/off
• Puck shadow on/off
• And even international units — lbs/kg/stone… MPH/KPH… MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY… 12/24 hr clock… ft/meters — have all been thrown in for good measure (horrible pun intended… sorry).

That just covers a number of miscellaneous features and options I came across in my first run-through. We’ll have more details and information tomorrow.