Babak Shahrivar (Polmaniac932) is back with this year’s exclusive look at NHL 2K11.

For the 2nd year in a row, I was given the chance to head over to the VC offices a couple months before release in order to get a hands-on preview of the next upcoming game in 2K’s NHL franchise. I’ve been a member of 2khockey.net since its inception, and like many other members of these forums, am somewhat picky when it comes to the right kind of hockey game. As someone who plays sports games almost exclusively on the 360, I was pretty impressed with what I saw of NHL 2K11 on the Wii.

1:1 Motion Controls

The first thing I did was take control of the San Jose Sharks in a quick game against the Philadelphia Flyers. What really struck me right away was the responsiveness of the controls for the Wii Remote. For example, dekeing is activated once you hold down on the D-pad; at that point, you use the nunchuck analog stick to control the movement of your player, while side-to-side swipes with the remote control the range of the deke. Not only did it feel very natural, but the extent of the deke is followed very accurately based on how far you aim the remote from left to right.

NHL 2K11's Practice Mode lets you refine your stickhandling skills with the 1:1 motion controls. Every movement you make with the remote, your player makes with his stick on the ice — on both offense and defense.

The same goes for shooting: if you want to take a half-swing slapshot, a quick snapper, or load up for a bomb, you have the ability to do so without the need for a canned animation. This extends into defensive stick control as well, along with some creatively advanced moves: the lacrosse-style dekeing (lifting the puck up on your stick) looks great, and was surprisingly a lot of fun for me, given the range of creativity you’re given once you lift the puck on your stick.

If that last statement made some of you roll your eyes or groan, don’t worry — it is not easy to control or perform this move in the thick of a game. Even with a clear breakaway, it was pretty difficult to pull off. And if you really don’t want to see this happen at all in your game, you can simply lower the “Creativity” slider to the point where it’s impossible to do and the CPU will not attempt it either.

But as Gameplay Producer Anthony Yampol said in a recent Developer Insight, “This is fun stuff to practice. When I go to free skates at the local rink, a large majority of the people are just fooling around with the puck and trying new things. With the all-new Wii MotionPlus controls, you can try whatever you want, as well.” It is fun and accurate to control, and it’s up to you if and how to use your hockey stick’s full range of motion.

All in all, the new controls of 2K11 make each movement of the remote critical whether playing on defense of offense. While I’m sure the controls may have somewhat of a learning curve for the new user (I was having a little trouble getting the hang of it in the tutorials), there didn’t appear to be any issues in terms of responsiveness.

Also, if you’d rather not play with the Wii remote and motion controls, there is the option of using the Classic Controller instead. This works well for someone who’s used to playing sports on the 360 or PS3.

Yesterday 2K Sports sent us a near-final copy of NHL 2K10. After running through the tutorial, getting a feel for the controls in practice mode, and playing through a couple of quick games, we spent quite a bit of time looking through all the new options and features.

My time with the game last night was brief, but there were a lot of details I took note of. So instead of writing a formal preview, I thought it might be easier and more effective to just start listing some of the things I’ve found. We’ll start with franchise mode (some of this was already covered in the most recent Developer Insight, but I hope to provide some extra details, context, and impressions), with more to come later.

Up front, some of the options include:

• Autosave — After games played, trades, and other events
• Sim Period Length —There’s obviously regular Period Length for games played, but also a “Sim Period Length” for simmed games. So you can set your played length to 7 minutes but sim length to 20, and scale that number to see the kinds of stats you’d like in the rest of the league.
• Franchise Ticker — Choose whether scores & stats are pulled from real life, or from your franchise. I didn’t see the ticker in my short time with it; there’s a good chance any real-life score data is not available on 2K’s website yet, which would explain some of it.  In franchise, it may have to do with what time of day your game is played (so if you play on the East coast, you may not really see other scores because you’re playing before the other scheduled games to be simmed).  I was indeed in Boston for my quick test of this, so I’ll try a West coast game later to see if I get that day’s simmed franchise scores to pop up.
• Season Length — 29 / 47 / 61 / 82 games
• Trade Override — With this on, I went to trade Lidstrom to the Hawks for a scrub. Obviously Detroit’s interest meter was not very high. But someone may want to make trades like this to move players; say, to mimic a real-life trade that the game’s Trade Logic AI doesn’t like.  So instead of just being denied the trade or having to package together some wacky collection of players to make it happen, I was simply prompted with, “The Red Wings are not interested. Force trade?”  This works even with teams you don’t control.

Of course this may be a moot point if you control all 30 teams in franchise mode — which you can.  Up to 30 teams may be set to user control.  But each can have its own individual level of CPU team automation.  There’s lineup management, optimize strategy for simmed games, trades, contracts, and draft.  Each has its own toggle, on a per-team basis, to choose between user and CPU control.  So even if you control a bunch of teams, you don’t have to manage every aspect of each one… unless you want to, of course.

Our good friend and longtime member Babak Shahrivar (Polmaniac932) took a trip to 2K Sports’ studios for an exclusive look at NHL 2K10.

On Thursday, the good ol’ folks at 2K Sports were kind enough to let me try out NHL 2K10 before its release next month. I suppressed my excitement and tried to soak in as much of the experience as possible, since I knew I wouldn’t have a chance to play it for another 30 days or so.

After putting some thought into it, I really feel the best way for me to translate my hands-on experience into useful information for you guys is to not only elaborate on aspects of the game I feel help replicate a realistic simulation, but to also note the most noticeable improvements over last year’s version.

Presentation

To begin the comparison, I have to talk about presentation. Whether it be the new menus, ridiculously detailed arenas, or revamped player models, the game is absolutely gorgeous. I know you guys have already seen pictures and videos of this stuff online, but it’s really something to behold in person.

The arenas look eerily lifelike, individually rendered down to the correct glass type and hue of the lighting

I really have to place emphasis on the player models and faces. This is something that I felt was a huge issue last year, and based off of what I got to see of various Sharks and Oilers players up close, the overall quality is greatly improved.

The game just has a vibrancy and brightness to it that 2K games of the past have lacked. Really awesome in this department, and I know you guys will feel the same the moment you get your hands on the game.

Tighter Controls

Onto the good stuff: the gameplay. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I felt 2K9 didn’t offer a significant level of control. With 2K10, it’s a completely different story.

After winning the opening faceoff, I didn’t have to worry about a defenseman spinning uncontrollably in his own zone or not having the ability to properly guide my players where I intended for them to move. The controls feel much tighter and more refined, well beyond the jerkiness of 2K9’s default settings.

Beauty AND brains: in addition to the improved graphics, the AI plays smarter and better positionally

At the same time, it’s not perfect: I experienced some slight sporadic movement with some of my players at various points in the game, although this could very well have been due to my lack of experience playing the game. To be honest, although the game has many of the animations and elements of 2K9, it felt much more akin to 2K7 and 2K8 — which, for the “sim” gamer, is a great thing.

Improved AI

The AI looked pretty strong as well. I don’t remember having any issues with my defensemen not holding the line. My teammates always seemed to be in the right position for the open pass, and the opposing AI appeared pretty tenacious on both offense on defense, which is a huge factor for a good offline experience.

I’d almost given up on offline play vs. the computer the past several years due a lack of tenacity by the CPU AI, but what I saw—albeit very little—looked quite promising.