NBA 2K10

I used to play basketball locally in the UK and watch games when I get the chance –getting ESPN added to my package recently meant I was able to watch a few more games than previously possible. This reignited my interest in the sport and I picked up a used copy of this game for under a tenner. The first impression of it is how good it looks – not as good as the 2K11 demo perhaps, but when on a "broadcast" camera it is easy to mistake it for the real thing – as indeed my girlfriend did ("why are you holding the controller?" she asked when she walked into the room where I had the game on). Close up the players resemble their real life counter parts but not perfectly of course.

Anyway, I opened the instruction book to read through the controls and was taken aback by the variety of moves possible using all sorts of combos and directionally-sensitive movements. Now in my 30's my hand/eye is not as good as it once was but it is still good, I prefer to play one game at a time to make it easier to learn them, but learning controls quickly is not hard for me. Here I started out with the basics and decided to leave a lot of the more complex stuff to later. At this point in my user comment, I had typed several paragraphs about the first 8 hours of playing this game to illustrate my point, but I deleted those as it was rambling – so let me just say that I could not get into the game. Kobe would miss from mid-range open jumpers while my opposition hit "in your face" 3 point shots off the dribble (all this on Rookie setting) and the reasons for this were never clear to me.

I spent time in the drills etc (also doing My Player to try and focus on drills etc as I progress) but everything seemed overly complex and with minimal explanation. The training aspect of the game is very weak and it does seem to require that you not only have a solid understanding of the sport, but that you already have played the NBA 2K games before. On free-throws the game does give you feedback but this is about the only place it happens. Even in the drills there is not even an attempt to say "this is what this move should be like and the goal is to get this player free here so you can shoot from there" – instead you follow the lines the best you can and get told "completed" or "broke down", with no other feedback. And this is my problem with the game and one that continues to bug me after about 10 hours of playing it – the game doesn't seem interested in helping new players (of which I am one – new to modern basketball sims and new to the 2K series). Instead you are just left to work it out yourself by trial and lots and lots of error.

In My Player you get an agent who insults you and gives you "inspirational" quotes but isn't set to actually give you helpful feedback. The very least it could have done would have had a function within a training game of My Player where the game will feedback on each play – voting me down for "bad spacing" when I was trying to come to provide a screen is not helpful feedback. That is the least they could do, but what they should have done was make a much more "noob" friendly training package of hand-holding. With almost every game there is a gradual "introduction" to the basics to help you get your feet, whether it is easy missions at the start where you are spoon-fed control basics for the first hour of play or something like that – hell, even COD multiplayer (that most unfriendly of places for new players) has a "combat training" option now! With NBA 2K10, there isn't anything like that – I was left to get frustrated and try to Google my way out of it. I was worried pulling off complex button combos would be beyond me but in reality I was frustrated long before I started trying to learn those. The game just seemed happy to throw me into the action and assume that I'd work stuff out on easy setting – but it didn't happen for me, I mean, even the menu design was far from user friendly! Using the sliders to make it easier didn't help me get better at the game, it just meant I could be frustrated and ineffectual but still blow the other team out with unrealistic shots, which is not fun or challenging.

NBA 2K10 looks great and it moves great but it seems to have no interest in players not already familiar with the sport or the game franchise. "Tutorials" (such as there are) are unhelpful and the game feedback on performances is either too basic (grade drops with a two-word explanation) or stupid (your agent tells you he laughed out loud at some of your shots). If you know the sport and have played NBA 2K before, then I'm sure you'll love it, but if you are new to one or both then be wary – this game will give you almost no help to get into it, which for my money was sadly too big a failing for it to make me persist with it for an unrealistic period of time.