by: John Olin

September 18, 2007

2K Sports has always been able to make a fantastic hockey game, and this year is no different when it comes to a fantastic franchise mode, plenty of options, and it tries to get you to learn the new controls pretty well. The only problem with it is the controls are incredibly stiff and complicated. I will completely admit that I am not the biggest hockey fan out there, and in my experiences I enjoy hockey more actually at a game, drunk, naturally, and while I don’t expect that same experience in a simulation the controls almost take out all fun you could possibly have. You can always revert to the old way of playing the game from past years, but then the one thing this game is built around is subtracted out of the equation.

The first place the game seems to go wrong is that you do an insane amount of checking, and you can do it so much that it feels like you are cheating. I don’t think I have ever watched a real hockey game that even allowed that much checking to happen, let alone had a good enough hockey to accomplish the incredibly bone-crushing checks that happen in NHL2K8. This doesn’t help that the A.I. opponents are pretty much on one track when you play any single-player mode, and while it is are over-aggressive, it screws up a lot making the players dumb even in the hardest settings. This is sadly counter-balanced however by the new controls.

The biggest problem is that the new control scheme “Prostick” is a good one in theory; you are given more control of the puck, able to move it in all directions so that you can improvise your style as you go, but the stiffness of it doesn’t help out. You can shoot with the stick, pass with it, but a lot of what you are doing is just you manually selecting what may be bad choices in the first place, and I couldn’t even see hardcore simulation fans appreciating the controls as they are. Just to shoot you have to use about two three buttons, when you actually hit the puck in with the ProStick controls a lot of times it looks like the player freezes up and you it makes for some awkward shots. It gets even more deep in the fact that depending on how good you player is, is how well the mechanic will actually work. It would have been nice if they refined the Prostick much more, to make it smoother, more responsive, less clunky, and even figured out a way to map out all of the controls just to the analog sticks and triggers. What is even worse though is the new controls will cramp your hands especially when the controller bumpers handle a lot of the passing, shooting, and the way they are used in conjunction with other buttons on the controller. Two different speed boosts that have incredibly minuet differences between each other just helps add to the over complicated mess which is the controls of NHL 2K8.The online portion of the game is pretty well done with a lot of options that you probably wouldn’t even expect, but there can be some bad slowdown. The funniest part about online though is that the guy you are playing against will be struggling with the screwed up controls just as much as you, and so far, being what I would consider a amateur at the series, I haven’t found one person that seemed to be far better skilled against me.

As far as the rest of the game goes, there are plenty of deep game modes with plenty of options to wet any hockey fans appetite for some good biscuit-hitting action. The franchise mode in particular has plenty of options to make you feel like you are actually managing the teams, so this should be any fans dream in that respect. Some great gameplay changes have occurred despite the messy controls. When you face-off you can now control where your stick goes with the right analog, and sometimes you will actually clash sticks, freezing each opposing player to fight over the puck, leaving another teammate from either team to grab it out of the face-off. If you time it right you can quickly switch to another team member and get the puck yourself. Because of how easy it is to accomplish the stopping face-offs, you may find yourself taking advantage of it more often than not. Superstar moves are another cool edition to the game that makes you do some really neat stuff that you wouldn’t normally see in a hockey game, but they are of limited use and give you little advantage over the player other than to show-off.

Visually the game is getting there against its EA Sports competition. 2K Sports titles have never been about the glitz and presentation and it is apparently still true with NHL2K8 but you can see a definite difference in the visuals this year. The animations throughout the entire game are more fluid and realistic, the details in the game are better, and the players faces, ice effects, and so on look better.

The sound isn’t terrible, but it isn’t anything especially different from last year either. The only thing I can personally say that stands out to me is the addition of Korn’s “Blind” which to me is one of the ten best songs you could put in any game or movie, although that effect my views of the game. The soundtrack overall isn’t bad at all though, although it is pretty small to today’s standards. The rest of the game is standard in terms of sound effects and commentary, and gets the job done.

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NHK2K8 is a fantastic simulation with deep game play modes. Unfortunately none of this matters when you factor in the fact that the new control scheme cripples a lot of the fun and excitement that could be found from previous years in the series. Hopefully next year the team refines the ProStick mechanic, 2K Sports typically is on cue when it comes to making sports titles right, and I suppose everybody, including developers make mistakes, otherwise skate away from this year and stick with 2K7.

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