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.

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.