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Review by Blair Fraser (aka Fraserburn)
“Welcome to the “New” NHL.” We heard that repeatedly last year during the comeback season of the National Hockey League. September 12, 2006 marked the comeback year for EA Sports NHL 07. It’s a revolution in its infancy.
The Good: Graphics and Visuals like you’ve never seen before and Skill Stick, Skill Stick, Skill Stick!
The Bad: EA has a new baby and like most babies this one is bare bones naked. Skeletal Franchise and Tournament modes and shy on customizability Graphics/Sounds
NHL 07 brings the fans the best looking player models, crowd and building visuals of any sports game to date. I can easily tell who the players are just by looking at them. Rod Brinda’mour’s broken nose, The Predator Anson Carter’s long hair, Jagr tucking his skates into his socks all the fine little details like that are in the game.
The Goalie visuals are simply outstanding. Florida Panthers goaltender Alex Auld did all the MoCap for EA and it is all spot on. One complain though is every goalie plays net the same way in the game when we all know while 80% of the goalies are Butterfly goalies Hasek is a flopper and others play a more stand-up style.
The puck physics are unreal in a realistic way. The puck moves at such a realistic level you’ll feel like it can do just about anything and go just about anywhere. Pucks will trickle in if they get through the goalie, you can bank it off his skates from behind the net, it isn’t glued to your stick at all times and so on.
The sounds are on par with most EA games. As usual they have their random bunch of songs from no name rock bands that get old after 2 days, but this time they give you the option of customizing your own soundtracks…..THANK YOU. The on-ice sounds bring you into the game I love the sound of the skates on the ice, a nice little touch.
Commentary this year is revamped with new announcers Gary Thorne and Bill Clement. They bring fresh commentary to this years game, and it is applied well in all the right places if it isn’t especially well written. The Crowd and on-ice sounds are where its at anyway.
Skill Stick
EA might have stumbled upon the single greatest innovation in hockey video gaming (and possibly sports video-gaming) since the one timer in NHL 94. I have never before felt so in control of what I’m doing on the ice. Sure I could deke left and right and press the X button and roof a flick top cheese, but now I deke left, right, backwards, toe drag, spinorama then pull it out wide for a wrister or bring it back for the clapper. I’m doing this not some button its all me.
Like previously said the right analog stick will do just about anything. It dekes, shoots, hits, moves the stick in a defensive manner, wins faceoffs. Is there anything it can’t do?
Now since the learning curve for this control scheme is pretty steep there is the option to go back to the old style if some of you just cant get used to it. I’ll say it now this is the future of hockey gaming, 2K pay attention.
AI
The offensive AI in this game is dangerous. You actually feel like if you give the puck away or don’t play smart in your own zone the other team will make you pay. This is extremely apparent if you let the computer have a breakaway on you. Watch out!
Offensively your players and theirs have a tendency to get ahead of themselves and go offsides awaiting a pass and the goalies like to push the puck in their own net while trying to cover it (thankfully this is few and far between)
Defensively the players move and react like they should covering the front of the net and the opposing defensemen, but the odd time you’ll see one stay behind the net with the puck too long and you can go steal it from him.
2K has the AI advantage here, but that is a product of building on that same engine for 4-5 years….
Dynasty / Extra Modes
Franchise - One word, Skeletal.
It’s a bare bones package. Something to build on and slightly buggy, but it’s a good start
The Salary Cap is in there (sort of) along with 1 & 2-way contracts and they got rid of the annoying Owner Goals system. Other than that though it is pretty much the same as years past
Online:
Ranked and Unranked games, custom matches and that’s it. Sorry no online leagues folks. Not to mention the poor EA servers which leads to missed hits, late button recognition, and some random face-off glitch where you’re skating along and suddenly you’re back at the faceoff dot….
World Tournament:
We’ve been playing this for how many years? Thanks for tossing us a bone it has to be in here but wheres the rest of it?
Shoot-out:
We had this already. I think it’s called a demo…
Where are the elite leagues? Maybe the AHL? Oh I don’t know options for shortened seasons, playoffs, turn off CPU trading, multiple human ran teams, FANTASY DRAFT!!!!
Presentation/Menu
I’m not sure this required its own subsection but here goes. The menus look fine and they aren’t slow like in madden. Why are they slanted you cant see the damn numbers on the right hand side because it gets so small. Eventually I found the option to turn it off thankfully.
In game views welcome to my personal beef (a hockey video-game beef in general) That is NOT a broadcast view if it moves side to side. That is a SIDE view. A broadcast view in a hockey game is one where the camera is fixed at center ice and pans left, right and zooms in when the play is in either end zone. Some of the gaming geeks around here like to set up their franchises and let the computer hash it out between the teams and sit back and watch. I want to be able to run my team and sit back and watch and have a beer thinking that I’m watching a fair resemblance of a real hockey game my team vs his team.
Anyways to wrap up this rambling cobbled together first review NHL 07 is a good base for EA to build on. This could be something great the question is will EA take it where it needs to go?
Graphics/Sounds – 9/10
AI - 7/10
Control - 10/10
Presentation - 8/10
Dynasty/mode depth - 6/10
Overall - 8/10
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