Xbox 360: NBA 2K10 Review

NBA 2K10's cover boy is Kobe "Yo' Shaq, tell me how my ring tastes" Bryant. Having a member of the defending NBA champions on your cover is a nice little bit of symbolism. Who is top dog when it comes to basketball video games: NBA Live or NBA 2K? As of last year, It was a toss up in my opinion. Unless NBA Live 10 lacks anything resembling an online game mode, 2K10 will have a hard time claiming the crown this year.

In an attempt to add more replay value to a game that already features tight controls, association mode, and everything else that you would expect in a basketball game in this day and age, 2K Sports has delivered a new mode called "My Player". It's kinda like Sony's NBA 2007 The Life: Vol 2, only slightly better(mostly because Sony's game was subpar, and not worth playing even with that gimmick.)

In My Player, you build a NBA scrub from the ground up by taking part in the off season summer league, D-league, training camp, and eventually you become a part of an NBA roster.It's very rewarding. Of course, if you don't like using uncoordinated goofs in sports video games, you won't have fun with My Player. It takes a long time to build up your wannabe super star, and the continuous penalties that stifle your progression(hogging the ball, calling for the ball, looking at the referees, , breathing, etc.) adds a great deal of frustration to the experience.

2K10 is gorgeous! The textures, animations, and facial expressions on players faces are all very well done. When it comes to gameplay, not much has changed from the last few releases. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing though. There have been vast changes in control scheme sense the first two games. As someone who used to dunk on fools in NBA 2k1 on SEGA Dreamcast, I feel right at home playing 2K10 on Xbox 360. Too bad the frame rate is garbage, and online play is impossible until some sort of update patch is released by the developers.

As always, the NBA 2K series delivers. 2K10 is a fun addition to any sports fan's gaming library. Once 2K Sports figure out whats causing the problem with the Xbox 360 version in online games, and overwrite that glitchy code that messes up the speed offline, this game should be pretty solid. Until these problems are attended to, I'll use My Player to kill time before the regular season begins.