NBA 2K10 Draft Combine Roundtable Leftovers - jyoung's Blog

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NBA 2K10 Draft Combine Roundtable Leftovers Stuck

Posted on September 10, 2009 at 09:06 PM.

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Our staff had a great time with the NBA 2K10 Draft Combine roundatable, so I'm here to share some bonus content that we couldn't fit into the actual article.

After writing one of our most-discussed features last year on the problems that kept NBA 2K9 from being a truly great game of basketball, I thought I should take this opportunity to say something about where the NBA 2K series seems headed after trying out Draft Combine, so here are the impressions that we couldn't fit into the roundtable:

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I look at Visual Concepts' NBA 2K10: Draft Combine as a sort of extended "rental" that lets people preview the game for more than month before the retail release actually hits stores.

In that light, NBA 2K10: Draft Combine is a great value at $5 -- even if it lacks any sort of long-term re-playability -- because players are definitely getting a good, long look at how NBA 2K10 is going to play this October.

Problem is, as someone who's hated the direction the series has taken since NBA 2K7 (more animations, less player control), I'm still not convinced that NBA 2K10 is recommitted to giving gamers that feeling like they are actually controlling their player instead of fighting the game's gratuitous animations every step of the way.

On one hand, Draft Combine's player-lock camera really helps to solidify the immersion of the new "My Player" mode, as it gives you a nice, angled view of the court that's got just the right amount of distance and doesn't obscure too much of the court. But on the other hand, simply moving your player where you want him to on that court remains a huge frustration for the series.

Take Draft Combine's familiar "shooting" drill, for instance: while this event should be all about nailing the timing of your player's jump shot, the real challenge comes from fighting the game's awkward dribbling animations as you try to position your player so that his feet are firmly behind the three point line but still close enough to create a makeable shot.

The footwork issues in Draft Combine's "shooting" drill point towards a central problem in the recent direction of the NBA 2K series: while the games have captured a lot of the sport's glitz (the beautiful shooting and dunking animations), 2K still has a lot of work to do when it comes to representing basketball's core fundamentals.

For instance, I'm still extremely bothered by the lack of basic, pass catching animations in Draft Combine. Ten years later, players in NBA 2K still cannot do something as simple as catching a pass in stride and continuing along their established path; instead, the game reuses the same awkward animations where players come to a complete stop after catching a pass or take an extra two or three steps away from the basket. As smooth as some of the new passing animations are, it amazes me that 2K's developers still haven't figured out how to animate the whole "catching" part of pass equation the properly.

Another thing that continues to bug me about 2K basketball is how much of the on-court action is automated by the CPU. On both sides of the ball, the CPU frequently jerks your player around the court instead of leaving him entirely under your command (try setting the controller down for a second on defense and notice how the CPU takes over and plays the game for you); these subtle CPU movements happen anytime you're not pressing a button, and on defense, they can really screw you up since Draft Combine

The left trigger just seems completely broken in seems to lack a functional "face the ball" button, requiring you to play almost exclusively with the analog stick to keep your assignment from blowing right by you. Draft Combine, as it consistently puts your player in bad defensive position with crazy CPU-controlled movements instead of simply doing its job and positioning your player between his man and the ball. 2K even managed to screw up the left trigger when it comes to box outs, as it now automatically pulls your player down below the free throw line if you try to box out a man who's standing along the perimeter.

These issues all speak to aspects of the defensive game that don't seem to be affected by the low player ratings of the Draft Combine players. But what about the game's horrible help defense and bad pick-and-roll logic? These problems have been in the last couple of 2K games, and we still don't know if the low player ratings of Draft Combine are to blame or if the player logic itself is simply as bad as it was last year.

Bottom line is, I hope some of these CPU defensive "assists" can be turned off for NBA 2K10, otherwise, it will (once again) be a major headache to keep your opponent off the score sheet.

If you asked me to rate the quality of basketball being displayed on NBA 2K10: Draft Combine's courts, I'd give it a 7/10. There's definitely some opportunities to tweak the game before it goes gold, but it remains to be seen whether 2K will fix some of the series' nagging issues or we're just going to get another game of "HORSE" that's encumbered by its animations and ships with a number of key defensive issues.

-- Jayson Young

Comments

# 1 TreyIM2 @ Sep 10

I didn't have time to go in depth about the DC earlier when I posted on the roundtable, but yea, the biggest boon of the series is still also it's biggest detriment - Animations. I found myself a few times not being able to get in good positions and control my player because the players still have wonky animations, at times, that take u out of a play. I've gotten used to it and manage to have always dealt with that in my own ways and just plain ole gotten used to the lack of control but yea, you're right, it can definitely be deemed as a nagging issue going into the actual 2K10 game if it is not resolved for the actual game.

Now, with Live introducing more of a total control and depending on how Live plays out in the demo, it could be trouble for 2K IF they haven't worked that out, themselves.

# 2 bigsmallwood @ Sep 10

Yea...these animations have to stop being so wonky! IDK why they still exist lol

# 3 Joka2122 @ Sep 11

Apparently, I'm in the same boat as you guys. As 2k seems to be heading in the right direction. Somethings just don't add up right. I guess they felt human players couldn't control their man on defense good enough, so they added the CPU Assistance to fix the problem, only to find out they made things worse. I was expecting with this version, the 2k team would give control back to its user. Unfortunately, by the Combine, it doesn't look that way. As an average 2k fan, it has me wondering which way to go in respects to this game. They still have a month to go. Let's see how things "hopefully" pan out!