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.

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.