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.
