Every year around September it’s the same thing for me; I get so damn psyched for hockey season. I love it. One of the longest seasons in all of professional sports and I get to sit down every September with two of the latest hockey games. The great thing about the hockey gaming genre as opposed to, say, Madden is that there’s still a large sense of competition. EA and 2K Sports still battle it out every single year to see which of that season’s hockey games is the best.
Since NHL 07, I’ve been in the EA Sports camp. The introduction of the Skill Stick into the world of virtual hockey was nothing short of brilliant. Move and control the shots and dekes of the players on the ice in one of the most intuitive fashions to ever grace gaming. This is EA we’re talking about… the company often slammed for their lack of innovation. It was a hard thing to swallow, but ever since EA put out NHL 07, 2K Sports has been left in the dust.
They’ve just been putting up such a dismal effort compared to the folks at EA, and this year is looking no different. What’s EA Sports bringing to NHL 09? Just a little thing called the EA Sports Hockey League (EASHL). MMO Hockey, the first sport game to ever do it. Players will build their own characters, join a team and hit the ice in a competition that defines the hockey world. They’ll compete for their own cup and do it with a team of five other people. There are online stats, trading, scouting, leader boards and, eventually, a SportsCenter feeling. It’s going to be truly innovative and perhaps a bit revolutionary for the Sports Gaming genre as a whole. Hopefully we’ll see other sports adopt this tactic in the future.
But what does NHL 2K9 bring to the table? It doesn’t hold up, according to the demo. In this download players will be able to play one period of hockey between the Red Wings and the Penguins; last year’s Stanley Cup matchup. Let me say this positive thing about the NHL 2K9 demo… the introduction for Detroit is incredible. Hockey Town at its finest, the Joe Louis Arena lights up the same way it does in real life. We even get the giant highlights reel projected onto the ice, with actual NHL footage. It looks great, it brings up the level of intensity, hell the introduction alone is almost worth the bandwidth spent on the download.
But then it’s time to actually play the game. It’s an NHL 2K game, nothing too different, nothing too crazy. They’ve always been spot on with animations and fast play, but this one feels like an arcade game. Maybe the difficulty was bottomed out here to make the game more appealing, but I scored 5 one-timer goals in the first period. That’s not a good sign as this title has always been plagued with an automatic scoring sense. Shot, goal, shot, goal.
The spirit of the play even feels weak and withdrawn. The camera angle is wide (I’m sure you’ll be able to change this in the final version), the shots are choppy and the animations aren’t as fluid as they should be. In a world where competition thrives, NHL 2K9 just didn’t put anything significant up against NHL 09. NHL 09 looks faster, sharper, stronger and more dynamic by far.
But, then again, this is just a demo. NHL 2K has always been known for minigames and other nonessentials that add significant life and playability to the series. Notice the Zamboni game in the trailer way above. Perhaps 2K9 will be stacked with such features. But until the release, this demo is all we have to go on. I’m not impressed.
