Ensure you always legally own the game on console before downloading and using emulation etc blah blag blah 
I have been playing hell of a lot of 2k8, 2k10 and 2k11 the last couple of years via emulator so I'll give a run down here of the good and bad points of each game and emulator combo.
My opinion is that Xenia is the best experience for 2k10 and Dolphin for 2k11 (obviously it was Wii only). 2k10 for a while didn't work on Xenia but now it does since they implemented storage and profile saving. Best to use the Xenia experimental builds too as they are nearly always stable and get the newest test features. Xenia also runs the game better than RPCS3 which still suffers from frame rate dropping even on high end computers.
If you're a 2k8 kinda person then RPCS3 is the winner and RPCS3 upscales much better than Xenia currently, the game can look very good on a modern system and runs smoothly through PS3 emulation unlike 2k10. All three of these games are showing their age in many areas but still offer some fun over EA NHL, personally NHL 23 and NHL 24 are a step in the right direction but I still pull out the older 2k games.
My recommendation for emulation is get a minimum of a 7th gen i7 and gtx1080 with 16gb ram, the more power you have the better it gets. I have a Ryzen 5800x with rtx 4070ti and it all runs extremely well.
Things to note:
Sliders are a must to fix issues in gameplay that were never patched, rosters with stat modification can also help with game pace and feel. The PS3 and XBOX 360 era of console were around before game patching online was part of normal gaming culture. I've found with 2k10 and 2k11 that the AI defenders can get stuck, don't turn or refuse to close you down and this can result in too many breakaway chances, 2k8 doesn't seem to have this problem, but I've found in 2k10 setting the user speed burst 15-20 clicks lower than the AI can solve this to a certain extend but requires you to be a lot more aware of your defensive potion.
Through Xenia you can apply the 2k10 patch if you can find it online which fixes the speed bug crash bug and makes board pining work better, another reason to use this emulator over RPCS3. Basically if you set skater speed in the sliders to under 40 it can make the game lock up during faceoffs and this was never patched on PS3.
You're always going to get breakaways in 2k games more than EA but keeping them low makes the experience so much better. Ensuring that ice friction is higher than 40-50 helps too as the AI doesn't seem to react very well to low ice friction, which gives the human player a huge advantage turning and accelerating away. Having high checking, poke checking and stick lifting for the AI sliders allows them to steal the puck before you break away, don't forget to set defensive aggression too.
Focus your sliders on the AI defensive traits you may want to consider setting deep defending strats in the team strategies area of each game too this makes defenders stick back in their zone more. DJ Neo and Venom have posted good slider sets as a basis on these forums but I found the AI doesn't hit, poke or stick lift anywhere near enough. 2k11 sliders aren't really available so use my notes above setting those, this game particularly suffers from the breakaway bug and its so easy to make hits, so in my view set your checking to 0. 2k11 is a mess in a lot of areas but I've managed with tweaks to get it to play reasonably better.
Emulators explained:
RPCS3 - Probably the most popular method for playing 2K games currently. I see the most youtube videos for this method. There are a lot of modern rosters available too. 2k8 runs flawlessly now on a good spec PC but you will probably need to turn on Write Colour Buffers to fix broken and missing graphics such as player jersey names. 2k8 game does suffer from animation and cut scene speed up, this can be fixed for some people changing Framerate settings or using V-Sync but gameplay is normal speed and smooth.
2k10 runs well enough to play but can be choppy when using broadcast camera as this forces the game to render more rink effects, there are no best settings its dependant on your PC and this problem seems to reduce then increase between RPCS3 patches. It upscales really well and looks very good on 1080p and 1440p and above. The only annoying thing is the PS3 game never got patched so little bugs and tweaks are not available that improve the game.
Xenia - This emulator had a massive update about 4-5 months ago and now runs 2k10 better than RPCS3. The emulator doesn't upscale as well or have the graphical settings of RPCS3 yet but the framerate is near perfect on a good spec machine. I have upscaled it to max on Xenia and get a bit of black screen flicker on faceoffs but that doesn't bother me. As 2k10 was patched for Xbox the game overall is so much better as tweaks were made to the animations and the faceoff bug doesn't occur. You can install this patch through Xenia in less than 30 seconds. I would say installing Reshade is a good addition to tweaking the graphics. I've only briefly tried 2k8 through Xenia but gave up as the game suffered lots of missing graphics and gameplay was sped up too much. Might need someone to really play with the config file to see what is achievable.
Dolphin - Recently started dabbling in 2k11 and Dolphin again. My only real complaint with Dolphin is its fiddly and clunky to setup controllers. As the game was built for a Wii remote and nunchuck controller navigating the menus is a bit hit and miss and you'll press the wrong buttons until you get used to buttons being swapped around, you'll need to set Classic Controller in the emulator. 2k11 plays extremely well, that said there are some weaknesses in this game that you can only fix 80% with sliders. Hitting is way overpowered and the breakaway bug is rife. I've had to set the AI speed so much higher than human and set hitting down to zero. The thing about 2k11 though is it has a proper working skill stick, no animation lock the older games suffered from and it just feels more modern with its animations and shooting. The game does upscale very well but you're going to have to put up with a lot of low res Wii textures I've used the texture dumping and loading settings in Dolphin to make and import my own high res versions of each teams ice rinks.
Closing notes:
These are older games now they are missing things like disallowed goals, fast paced commentary and 3 on 3 overtime hockey, or a 32 team league. All the trade and draft rules are outdated. On the positive though 2k8 has an extremely deep franchise mode and worth checking out, and I can see why people suggest this game has the best goaltenders in an NHL game. 2k10 and 2k11 have really balanced and working penalty call systems the AI actually gets calls, which I found broken from NHL 12 up until about NHL 17.
One of my big big big pieces of advice for 2k8 is use Snowdrifts editor to make some edits at the start of your franchise mode. The game can be a bit low on penalty calls, as I've explained before in other treads, globally set all of your player aggression 15-20 points higher than standard, and lower composure levels across the board. I tweak mine so every player fits into the 30-60 range of composure. This of course lowers all players overall rating so you'll need to edit at the start of each franchise year but with penalty call slider set to max you'll start to see the AI end up in the sin bin which is a big part of hockey.
2k10 and 2k11 have weaker franchise modes but strong on ice game play, so my view is let the AI dictate things like drafting and trading to make things harder. Slider settings and custom rosters have kept the games alive to a certain extent. I personally think the EA NHL series is overall a better product now but those games ARE missing something, every now and then something will happen in a 2k game that makes me very happy.
Goalies in the EA NHL series have come a long way and only 2k8 gets near that, 2k10 and 2k11 do have weaker goalies on a breakaway or shootout. 2k games can be slowed down and made into more of a simulation than EA games and I think that is the appeal, the AI feels a little bit fairer. If you're someone who gets 5-10 years into a franchise you'll love the 2k10 and 2k11 historical stats that track things for years.
If you're wishing to play multiplayer coop I've yet the try the netplay features in RPCS3 and Dolphin I use a combination of emulator and a programme called Parsec to connect in my friend to share my screen and desktop. When I've got time I'll post up my 7-8 minute period sliders for each game. If you're an NHL Legacy player keep an eye out onlin as I'm parting the modding community for this game and I'm releasing a new roster editor soon capable of much more than NHL view.
I have been playing hell of a lot of 2k8, 2k10 and 2k11 the last couple of years via emulator so I'll give a run down here of the good and bad points of each game and emulator combo.
My opinion is that Xenia is the best experience for 2k10 and Dolphin for 2k11 (obviously it was Wii only). 2k10 for a while didn't work on Xenia but now it does since they implemented storage and profile saving. Best to use the Xenia experimental builds too as they are nearly always stable and get the newest test features. Xenia also runs the game better than RPCS3 which still suffers from frame rate dropping even on high end computers.
If you're a 2k8 kinda person then RPCS3 is the winner and RPCS3 upscales much better than Xenia currently, the game can look very good on a modern system and runs smoothly through PS3 emulation unlike 2k10. All three of these games are showing their age in many areas but still offer some fun over EA NHL, personally NHL 23 and NHL 24 are a step in the right direction but I still pull out the older 2k games.
My recommendation for emulation is get a minimum of a 7th gen i7 and gtx1080 with 16gb ram, the more power you have the better it gets. I have a Ryzen 5800x with rtx 4070ti and it all runs extremely well.
Things to note:
Sliders are a must to fix issues in gameplay that were never patched, rosters with stat modification can also help with game pace and feel. The PS3 and XBOX 360 era of console were around before game patching online was part of normal gaming culture. I've found with 2k10 and 2k11 that the AI defenders can get stuck, don't turn or refuse to close you down and this can result in too many breakaway chances, 2k8 doesn't seem to have this problem, but I've found in 2k10 setting the user speed burst 15-20 clicks lower than the AI can solve this to a certain extend but requires you to be a lot more aware of your defensive potion.
Through Xenia you can apply the 2k10 patch if you can find it online which fixes the speed bug crash bug and makes board pining work better, another reason to use this emulator over RPCS3. Basically if you set skater speed in the sliders to under 40 it can make the game lock up during faceoffs and this was never patched on PS3.
You're always going to get breakaways in 2k games more than EA but keeping them low makes the experience so much better. Ensuring that ice friction is higher than 40-50 helps too as the AI doesn't seem to react very well to low ice friction, which gives the human player a huge advantage turning and accelerating away. Having high checking, poke checking and stick lifting for the AI sliders allows them to steal the puck before you break away, don't forget to set defensive aggression too.
Focus your sliders on the AI defensive traits you may want to consider setting deep defending strats in the team strategies area of each game too this makes defenders stick back in their zone more. DJ Neo and Venom have posted good slider sets as a basis on these forums but I found the AI doesn't hit, poke or stick lift anywhere near enough. 2k11 sliders aren't really available so use my notes above setting those, this game particularly suffers from the breakaway bug and its so easy to make hits, so in my view set your checking to 0. 2k11 is a mess in a lot of areas but I've managed with tweaks to get it to play reasonably better.
Emulators explained:
RPCS3 - Probably the most popular method for playing 2K games currently. I see the most youtube videos for this method. There are a lot of modern rosters available too. 2k8 runs flawlessly now on a good spec PC but you will probably need to turn on Write Colour Buffers to fix broken and missing graphics such as player jersey names. 2k8 game does suffer from animation and cut scene speed up, this can be fixed for some people changing Framerate settings or using V-Sync but gameplay is normal speed and smooth.
2k10 runs well enough to play but can be choppy when using broadcast camera as this forces the game to render more rink effects, there are no best settings its dependant on your PC and this problem seems to reduce then increase between RPCS3 patches. It upscales really well and looks very good on 1080p and 1440p and above. The only annoying thing is the PS3 game never got patched so little bugs and tweaks are not available that improve the game.
Xenia - This emulator had a massive update about 4-5 months ago and now runs 2k10 better than RPCS3. The emulator doesn't upscale as well or have the graphical settings of RPCS3 yet but the framerate is near perfect on a good spec machine. I have upscaled it to max on Xenia and get a bit of black screen flicker on faceoffs but that doesn't bother me. As 2k10 was patched for Xbox the game overall is so much better as tweaks were made to the animations and the faceoff bug doesn't occur. You can install this patch through Xenia in less than 30 seconds. I would say installing Reshade is a good addition to tweaking the graphics. I've only briefly tried 2k8 through Xenia but gave up as the game suffered lots of missing graphics and gameplay was sped up too much. Might need someone to really play with the config file to see what is achievable.
Dolphin - Recently started dabbling in 2k11 and Dolphin again. My only real complaint with Dolphin is its fiddly and clunky to setup controllers. As the game was built for a Wii remote and nunchuck controller navigating the menus is a bit hit and miss and you'll press the wrong buttons until you get used to buttons being swapped around, you'll need to set Classic Controller in the emulator. 2k11 plays extremely well, that said there are some weaknesses in this game that you can only fix 80% with sliders. Hitting is way overpowered and the breakaway bug is rife. I've had to set the AI speed so much higher than human and set hitting down to zero. The thing about 2k11 though is it has a proper working skill stick, no animation lock the older games suffered from and it just feels more modern with its animations and shooting. The game does upscale very well but you're going to have to put up with a lot of low res Wii textures I've used the texture dumping and loading settings in Dolphin to make and import my own high res versions of each teams ice rinks.
Closing notes:
These are older games now they are missing things like disallowed goals, fast paced commentary and 3 on 3 overtime hockey, or a 32 team league. All the trade and draft rules are outdated. On the positive though 2k8 has an extremely deep franchise mode and worth checking out, and I can see why people suggest this game has the best goaltenders in an NHL game. 2k10 and 2k11 have really balanced and working penalty call systems the AI actually gets calls, which I found broken from NHL 12 up until about NHL 17.
One of my big big big pieces of advice for 2k8 is use Snowdrifts editor to make some edits at the start of your franchise mode. The game can be a bit low on penalty calls, as I've explained before in other treads, globally set all of your player aggression 15-20 points higher than standard, and lower composure levels across the board. I tweak mine so every player fits into the 30-60 range of composure. This of course lowers all players overall rating so you'll need to edit at the start of each franchise year but with penalty call slider set to max you'll start to see the AI end up in the sin bin which is a big part of hockey.
2k10 and 2k11 have weaker franchise modes but strong on ice game play, so my view is let the AI dictate things like drafting and trading to make things harder. Slider settings and custom rosters have kept the games alive to a certain extent. I personally think the EA NHL series is overall a better product now but those games ARE missing something, every now and then something will happen in a 2k game that makes me very happy.
Goalies in the EA NHL series have come a long way and only 2k8 gets near that, 2k10 and 2k11 do have weaker goalies on a breakaway or shootout. 2k games can be slowed down and made into more of a simulation than EA games and I think that is the appeal, the AI feels a little bit fairer. If you're someone who gets 5-10 years into a franchise you'll love the 2k10 and 2k11 historical stats that track things for years.
If you're wishing to play multiplayer coop I've yet the try the netplay features in RPCS3 and Dolphin I use a combination of emulator and a programme called Parsec to connect in my friend to share my screen and desktop. When I've got time I'll post up my 7-8 minute period sliders for each game. If you're an NHL Legacy player keep an eye out onlin as I'm parting the modding community for this game and I'm releasing a new roster editor soon capable of much more than NHL view.
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