NHL 2K10 Franchise Details (2KHockey.net)

Menu Options & Features

Posted by Chris Wszolek | September 11, 2009

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Getting used to NHL 2K10’s new menu system took me a few minutes. There is now a layered menu (called “2K Nav”) that you bring up with your right analog stick. It overlays whatever you’re doing with 9 quadrants of the screen; the middle box returns you to the previous page while the surrounding 8 represent each branching menu item.
Being used to a standard “list” menu, at first it was a little tricky finding a few options (remember, the Arena Music is under Options > Features > 2K Beats!) but after playing for a little while I was zipping around just fine. The same applies to the menu in franchise mode — once you get used to how the new setup works and where things are layered, finding everything becomes second nature.
The one nice thing about it is you can access the menu instantly, no matter where you are, with basically no load time. So even in the middle of a game, if you want to quit and go edit something, just pause the game and go to Main Menu. Because it’s an “overlay”, your paused game just stays in the background while you navigate the menu. Once you enter another mode you’re prompted that your game will exit, and 2 seconds later you’re at your destination. If you download the NBA 2K10 Draft Combine from Xbox Live or PSN, you can get a mini idea of what it’s like.
Definitely dig around when you first get the game to get a feel for what’s nested under each quadrant. In doing so, I happened upon a number of new options and features you might appreciate:

• 2K Share lets you download files uploaded by other players. The things you can upload are rosters, draft classes, gameplay sliders, and “Player DNA” (individual created players). It will be interesting to see how this pans out with community-contributed content.
• Strategies can be changed individually for all teams and for each individual line on every team, if you so choose to edit them. The defense, forecheck, backcheck, and breakout have the same options as past years. But this year you can also set:
  - Attack (Stay Back, Cautioned, Balanced, Aggressive, All Out)
  - Dump & Chase (Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High)
  - PK (Movable Box, Tight Box, Wide Box)
• All sliders are on a universal scale of zero to 100 (and ice friction & puck friction are options for those wondering)
• Faceoff Delay of Game is an option for getting kicked out of too many faceoffs
• The line change/penalty expiration Picture-in-Picture box can be turned off, set to Compact (show the name of the line in large text), or Full (show PIP video of players hopping over the boards and leaving the penalty box)
• The puck carrier’s name, position, number, ability icon, and speed burst meter can all be turned on/off
• Puck shadow on/off
• And even international units — lbs/kg/stone… MPH/KPH… MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY… 12/24 hr clock… ft/meters — have all been thrown in for good measure (horrible pun intended… sorry).

That just covers a number of miscellaneous features and options I came across in my first run-through. We’ll have more details and information tomorrow.