Product Description
-------------------
In the tradition of NBA 2K and NFL 2K, two of the finest console
sports games to date, Sega's NHL 2K s to score big as the most
realistic hockey simulation game ever seen. Those who've
witnessed the capabilities of this game's predecessors know what
to expect: hyperrealistic gameplay, TV-perfect camera angles,
jaw-dropping graphics, expert game commentary, and other fine
details that capture the spirit of the sport.
The game is licensed by the NHL and NHLPA, which allowed the
developers to include many of the fine details on and off the
ice. Teams and players from six NHL divisions are accurately
represented in the game. The motion-captured, detailed player
models perform as one expects from professional hockey players,
right down to custom special plays. With play-by-play commentary
by Hall of Fame announcer Bob Cole, and color commentary by
ex-NHL coach Harry Neale, NHL 2K seeks to put other hockey games
on ice.
Review
------
NHL 2K had so many expectations to live up to. It had to stand
up to the high standards set by its NFL 2K and NBA 2K
counterparts. And it had to be better than EA's NHL series, a
series EA Sports has had years to finesse. How do you even begin
to make a hockey game that can fill these tall orders? You get a
talented developer like Blackbox, and tell them that you want it
ready right around the time the all-star game rolls around. Many
things have been said about NHL 2K, and perhaps everyone's
expectations were too high. Sure, NHL 2K doesn't offer quite as
extensive a create-a-player mode as its 2K cousins, and it
certainly doesn't have all of the modes and options that games
like NHL 2000 on the PlayStation or N64 had. But it does have
everything required to deliver an amazingly realistic hockey
experience that more than deserves to be called great. There are
many elements that have to be just right for any type of sports
game to have the right feel. One of the most important,
obviously, is control. This is something the team at Blackbox has
elegantly simplified to make playing NHL 2K more about what you
do in the game, on the ice, than what buttons you push on your
controller. NHL 2K has a very simple control scheme that on the
surface may seem limited, but after spending some time with the
game you'll realize that the control scheme is much deeper,
letting you do almost all of the moves you could in other hockey
games just by using the analog stick. For instance, in most other
hockey games if you want to skate backward you push a button. In
NHL 2K when you're the defending player you automatically face
the skater with the puck, leaving you free either to check him
before he ever gets the off or to lie out in front of the
puck to block the . Even deeper is the level of control you
have over the placement of your . The instant you press the
shoot button and your player rears his stick back for the
you can actually use the analog stick to place the . Pressing
up and down varies the height of the while left and right of
course steers the puck in the corresponding direction. When
you're all alone on a breakaway, there's no deke button to press
to magically throw off the goalie - it's all you. You either have
the skill with the analog stick to fake him out or you don't. In
terms of responsiveness, the game controls very tight, and the
nature of the analog stick makes playing NHL 2K feel even more
natural than its football and basketball counterparts. While some
will surely see this simplified control scheme as a negative,
those who learn how the game works will love to "'play" NHL 2K
and never give the control scheme a second thought. Aside from
control, there are a ton of other important aspects that play
into how a game feels. One is the speed at which the game plays.
Many people have varied opinions on just how fast real hockey is
- thankfully, NHL 2K features an adjustable speed setting. Even
though the game's default setting feels very representative of
the actual speed at which real hockey plays, the adjustable
setting is nice to have. Another important quality, especially
for hockey, is physics. Both the player physics and puck physics
are wonderful. The puck skips, rolls, and flies out of play after
getting blasted off the top of someone's skate very
realistically. The player physics are also very true to life:
Players with more girth than others have an easier time of taking
out smaller skaters, but since the checking system is momentum
based, you can take out big guys with little guys if you get 'em
going fast enough. As fans know, the AI of the
computer-controlled players always makes or breaks a hockey game.
Fortunately, NHL 2K's AI is decent enough to appease both the
casual video-game hockey fan as well as the seasoned hockey
veteran. One characteristic about NHL 2K's AI that will split
opinions is that it is very true to the sport of hockey. If you
just watch hockey on TV for the fights and don't understand the
purpose of the different positions and their roles in performing
basic setups, you'll be wondering why some of the players
are just milling about. If this is the case, you can just turn
off some of the rules like offsides and icing. Then you can set
the offense to aggressive and defense to intimidate, and you're
set. However if you do know all of the intricacies of hockey, NHL
2K is a very satisfying game to play. When set on rookie, the
computer AI isn't a slouch. It just doesn't play aggressively,
and it gives you more time with the puck to learn how to play. On
pro, however, the computer (depending on which team it's
controlling) is either competent or it just wins. On all pro, the
computer is an animal. It uses the enforcers to crush you when it
can, and the teams finesse players just to take the puck away
from you when it can't. Oh, and then it makes a goal. But
seriously, the different AI settings are quite good, offering
enough variety to be challenging to anyone, at any level. But as
mentioned before, knowing the difference between what the Flyers'
center Eric Lindros does best, and what the team's left wing Mark
Recchi can do in real life, makes a big difference, as it should.
Graphically, NHL 2K (like its football and basketball cousins)
easily earns the title of the most visually accurate,
jaw-dropping game in its sport. Everything in the game looks
simply amazing - the players, the ice, the arenas, the
spectators, everything. The player models used in the game are
literally the most detailed ever, each comprised of 1,500
polygons. This extremely high polygon count gives the players a
realistic, round, smooth-skinned look. In addition, 800 of the
top players in the game actually have their real-life
counterpart's face ped right onto their polygonal head. This
technique of using the real faces of the actual athletes depicted
in the game, along with the super-smooth player models, gives the
players in NHL 2K an insanely realistic look. When these features
are combined with the more than 700 fluid motion-captured
animations, the game looks and moves just like the real thing.
The first time you see a player jump over a fallen teammate as he
picks up the loose puck, you'll just have to say "Wow." The same
is true for the first time you send the puck smashing through the
glass and it violently explodes. There are a lot of other little
visual effects that make the game look convincing - things like
facial expressions, real-time ice deterioration, reflections off
the ice and glass, and even ice shavings that spray off the ice
when players stop and turn abruptly. You can view the action from
several camera angles, the best of which happens to be the game's
default angle, which is a typical slightly tilted overhead view
that follows the action from one end of the rink to the other.
The only real difference at all is that this view is dynamic,
slightly zooming in and out depending on the situation. Compared
with the visual standard that NFL 2K and NBA 2K set, NHL 2K has
more to amaze you with, but overall it just doesn't look quite as
smooth. Even with that said, the game is still definitely
something that must be seen. --Ryan Mac Donald
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
- Sega Hockey NHL 2K Video Game for Dreamcast.