Sure, we all enjoy a great fighting games of hockey but who enjoys getting all sweaty all the time? I know I sure don’t, but at least with NHL2K10 you can have the fun of paying hockey without the sweat. Unless you get really sweaty from playing the Wii.
Game Modes
This game comes complete with your average hockey game modes, Franchise, Season, and Quick Game. But new to NHL2k10 is Control the Puck, Mii Super Skills Competition, Mini Rink, Pond Hockey, Team Up, and Online mode. Those are just on the Wii, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 have their own additions to the game series which include, Face-Off Online, Control the Puck, Better Graphics, Smarter Hockey, then you get all the returning game modes like Quick Play, Season, Franchise Playoffs, and Practice. I won’t go into detail with every game mode but I will talk about my three favorite and my three not so favorite.
1. Franchise Mode
This is where you take control of one or more teams and you become the general manager. You play through as many seasons as you would like, trading players, going through the drafts, retirements even the playoffs. Once you complete the first season you keep going.
2. Team Up
This allows you to play through a season while being a part of a team, you only play one player but you play him forever, well until the season is done at least. The best thing about his game mode is that you play with ten players in total via Nintendo Wi-Fi connection.
3. Quick Game
Quick Play lets you play one game with a friend, or the computer, really quickly. With the ability to change your jerseys and everything else, like rules, edit your lines, how frequent the penalties will be called and even how much friction the ice has against the puck. This is great if you only have fifteen minutes to play the game.
Now my not so favorite game modes are,
1. Season
I dislike playing season mode for many reasons, but the most prominent reason would be because your only playing through one season of hockey, so you might as well just play quick game eighty-two times and call It the same.
2. Playoffs
Being the shortened version of Season mode the reasons are pretty much the same, except you don’t have the hard work of actually earning who you would like to play in the tournament, in addition you can also pick who to play so you can just pick a bunch of suckish teams so that you have an easy win.
The addition of the Wii Motion Plus accessory was a great idea, the more responsive controls make playing the game more fun, but they also tire you out faster. They had clever ideas on the controls too, to deke you shake the Nunchuck Remote in the direction in which you would like to deke, to shoulder check you shake both remotes upwards, to body check you shake both remotes downwards.
One thing I disliked though is they tried to make it too much like hockey, if you try to make one swift motion you get a windup and no shot, thus you get stuck in the middle of the ice with a raised stick, even if you redo the shot motion your player will not shoot the puck, so you end up with baby shots a lot. Or you end up getting checked, the puck stolen, then the opposing team getting a breakaway.
Mii Super Skills
Accuracy shooting games.
The Mii Super Skills was a great addition to the Wii version of the game, this game mode allows you to take your Mii, put the number of any team captain on his back and go through a various number of games. These include:
Shootout, practice your abilities to deke out the goalies and score.
Goalie, Play as the goalie in a shoot out and stop the goals.
Hardest Shot, Try to shoot the puck harder and faster than your opponent.
Accuracy Shooting, try to hit the targets in the net.
Fastest Skating, try to out skate the speed records.
The edge, the best Super Skill competition in my opinion would have to be shootout. I suck hard at shoot outs so I play this one allot to get better and hone my skills.
Audio and Visual
The visuals were quite an increase from NHL2k9 the somewhat blocky players have been smoothed out and they look way better. They even re-vamped the main screens, the made them look better by removing the list type screen and change them into something like “blocks” that you point and click on.
The soundtrack this year sounds more like songs that they would play somewhere other than a hockey game. Songs include, 1901 by Phoenix, Skeleton Boy by Friendly Fires, Too Fake by Hockey, Take it Back by 20 Pound Shovel, Take My Everything by War Stories, The Victim by 2nd Day Crush. Plus a lot more of songs that I have not even heard of, the only song in the entire list I have heard of was 1901 by Phoenix.
Online
The online game modes are just as fun as the offline ones, but there is more lag. Lag in any sports game is bad because it makes you miss your shot. This is especially true in NHL 2K10 because you would see an opening, go to take your shot then boom you get hit by lag. While you are waiting you think of if it would be a better idea to shoot and wait, truth is neither one is better. If you wait for the lag to pass you get caught in the no-shot possible action with your Wii remote the start flailing it or if you take the shot there and then your opponent will steal the puck and get a goal on you.
Other than that there is also things like online tournaments, and your own player card, your player card will give you your total number of games played, won and lost. Otherwise it serves no purpose.
NHL 2k10 Game
