Home > Reviews > Xbox 360 > #1134

Screenshots (8) | Reviews Archive

NBA 2K10 Review - Xbox 360

Introduction

NBA2K9 really impressed last year. Carrying the full NBA license, 2K Sports had created one of the best and most authentic basketball games there was. Nearly every aspect of the game had been accurately reflected, and it received many favourable reviews over it's rivals. It's a hard one to follow up such success, but 2K has hit the courts again with a followup in NBA2K10, the tenth game in the series. While Electronic Arts has knocked off most of the opposition in sporting titles, it's good to see some competition, with 2K's NBA2K10 squaring up against EA's NBA Live 10, both being released at roughly the same time, and both battling for gamer's wallets.

Gameplay

Players can either elect to start at the top by using any of the big name teams in a full season, or in the new My Player Mode they can choose to start as an absolute rookie, practise and practise, get noticed, drafted, and progress through to the full NBA circuit. This mode works pretty well, with your coach the NBA Insider giving you various pointers on each game played, as well as some tips for improvement. It's a hard slog to the top though, and requires many many hours to build your skills to a professional level, just like the real thing. The results though are quite satisfying by having to work your way up, and work on your individual skills or specialties, rather play out a generic player.

The Association, or franchise mode, is probably the biggest recreation of the management side of the game, where you must deal with team budgets, buying and trading players, player contracts, and keeping them happy, and creating a balanced team or teams over many seasons. It will appeal to the real sports nerds, but for everybody else, they might simply be left scratching their heads at just too many options available.

Games can be played as either stand-alone matchups, or as part of a full season, and you can even chose to play out matches as they are played throughout the season via NBA Today (the games' release shadowing the start of the 2010 NBA season in October). During the season, depending on how you go, other teams may often you trades for your key players, or offer you draft picks, allowing to progress your team, as well as your offensive and defensive setups.

Matches all play out impressively, with all of the rapid-fire passing, layups, plays, and shots that make NBA entertaining, without any controls that are too finicky or frustrating. Defensive play has been amped up a little in this year's title, giving you some satisfying ways to steal the ball from your opposition, run down the court, and slam that ring. Set plays can be enacted during the game to help you run rings around the opposition team, and are required to really become a pro.

A new fatigue system ...

(continued next page)