My NBA 2K10 Nosebleed Epic Review by Kiko Navarro

Pros: Improved facial models and skin and hair textures. Great looking stadiums with nice lighting effects. More player and team specfic animations in offense and defense. Gameplay flows quicker with better player movement. Extensive play control. My Player mode is involving.

Cons: Passing animations sometimes feel robotic. Nerfed post defense. 2K online servers are buggy. My Player mode is frustrating.
My Overall Rating: 9.1/10

October usually means two things for me, cooler days in the Arizona desert and time to play as the Suns in the latest NBA 2K. This year is 2K's 10th anniversary so it's inevitably special, moreso as the Live series has been steadily improving the past few years, breathing hard on 2K's heels.
First off, graphics. Player models have vastly improved from 2k9. Skin textures are incredible. Pores and wrinkles show through realistic sweat without looking like plastic. Even the coaches and the scrubs look fantastic ( check out the Sun's Lopez). And they made an extreme effort to make hair look like hair ( again check out Lopez). They've upgraded the crowd in the stands with actual polygonal models and the stadiums are beefed up with more lighting effects. And amazingly no anti-aliasing issues, no jaggies are apparent. Soundwise, they've recorded a lot of new color commentary with Clark Kellogg flaunting his opinions on teams and superstars. There are repeats from him and Kevin Harlan but not often enough to annoy. What I like the most about the audio are the crowds. They react frighteningly spot-on all the time. Like when I was playing as a in the zone Nash, they actually chanted "MVP! MVP!"! Nice touch. Makes the game more organic.
We could talk about graphics all day, but without good gameplay, this would be a brick. Fortunately, 2k made good strides. Now you have extensive play control with 5 tabs with 4 plays each position and 1 quick play tab. My gripe is the time it takes to choose the play. You have to navigate in real time while the ball is live and you still have to get into position and wait for the play to develop. We only have 24 seconds after all. One thing I notice though is that player movement flows a lot smoother. They've added some real nifty off-ball moves, players actually do make an effort to get open. Post play moves have also been beefed up ( there's even a specific practice mode for it.) Now there's a button combination for fancy passes and backboard shooting. But even with all these improvements, sometimes passing animations still look a little robotic like old 2k games. They've also changed the shooting timing. As a veteran of 2k, that kinda ruined my shooting a bit, but that's an easy adjustment.
On the defensive side, you could finally steal from behind. So instead of pausing and swiping at a opposing player's butt, your player would actually try and get around to the ball. They kinda nuked post defense though. I used to spam the steal button when someone posts me up, hoping for a steal. Do that now and you'll be out of position and you'll be blown by. The defense lock has been also been replaced now with Intense D. Overuse it though against great drivers like Parker or Paul and you'll be punished by a lay-up ( I use Nash though so that's supposed TO happen) but it works wonders against Ray Allen or Korver. Help defense has improved, so even if someone blows you by, the bigs would react appropriately ( leaving you his man open though) Also, there are different levels of double teaming now. Instead of doing a hard double team each time, you could fake it or do it softly. These new defensive tools actually make playing D really enjoyable.
Now what you will enjoy the most are the new extra features. I like the full blown practice modes. In here, you could unending scrimmages and practice your team's plays over and over till you get them down. ( yeah, lt's like a fighting game practice mode, you could just spend your whole time "perfecting" your moves on a dummy, I'll probably spend a lot of time here and enjoy it! ) Another surefire time-waster is the My Player mode. Here you create a player from scratch, develop him through drills and games, have him drafted and see if could be a NBA superstar. Now I like the RPG qualities of this mode, but it gets too frustrating early on. Your player has less than stellar skills and he has to fulfiil game objectives to gain skill points. There's also this thing called Team Grade and this depends on everything you do on court. The mechanics are unforgiving and lopsided towards punishing errors. One time I got five straight assists without gaining a grade but after my man scored on me, it dropped a notch! Aggravating! But for all this mode's faults, I'll probably play it to death just how far my player will go.
Other new features are NBA today and 2k insider. these are real-time reports and blogs on any particular day's schedule. But since the Season hasn't started yet, there are no posts yet. But judging it by the preseason games, I think this mode will let you play any game matchups made on the current schedule.
Making their return are Living Rosters and DNA (constantly updated rosters and player ratings based on current season developments), 2k file-sharing ( for custom options, sliders and rosters), 2k reelmaker ( for highlight video-making), the Association ( franchise mode) and NBA Blacktop ( street mode with 3-pt shootout and dunk contest.
What I haven't really tested is online play though. As of this writing, the 2k servers were having issues. It was painfully slow to log-in, so just imagine finding a match and playing lag-free. It's pretty cool though that you could create your own crew of up to seven players and play online against other crews aside from the usual online leagues you could join.
So there it is, my ultra epic NBA 2K10 review. I was always a huge 2K fan since their Dreamcast days ( I played EA's Live before that) and it's about time I went all out on it. I only had the game for a few days ( oh yeah! Believe me!) so there might still be things here and there I haven't caught on yet but if you're a gamer and a NBA fan this is a must buy. It still has issues but with all the improvements they've added, it's totally the best b-ball game I've ever played. Get it while it's hot!

Graphics and Sound: 9
Gameplay: 9
Lasting Appeal: 9.5
My Overall Rating: 9.1