Nhl 2006

[Sava]

Originally posted by Asher

I never noticed that when I played -- what buttons do you press to change plays on the fly?

not the analog stick but the directional pad

Except when there's a few guys within the same small space. It's an option, you can do it the old way or the new way...the new way is much better IMO.

when I get nhl2k6 for ps2 I'll try it, but judging from what I've read about it on gamespot it doesn't sound very good

1) Sega doesn't make NHL 2K6.
2) I don't have a blind EA hatred, I have a learned dislike of the EA Sports NHL games. I bought them for nearly a decade before I upgraded.

oh they made nhl2k5... who is the developer now?

re: ea... that's fine... whatever floats yer boat... I'm just saying that you should give the game a chance. I loved NHL 2004, hated NHL2005, loved NHL2k5, and it looks like I'm going to love NHL06. I'm looking forward to NHL2k6 also.

at least we can agree hockey rules

btw, I just got done with a game of nhl2k5, the movement with left analog stick is a lot different than in NHL06. Not to say you are totally wrong... we were both right. It's just the games do it differently.

[Asher]

Been playing NHL 2K6 for Xbox all last night.

Love the pro passing controls -- I don't think it's possible for me to go back to a game without it.

[Sava]

Who are the commentators?

Is it still Bill Clement and Gary Thorne?

[Asher]

Oh **** no.

It's Hockey Night in Canada commentators.

Bob Cole and Harry Neale.

[Asher]

From IGN:

Perhaps the coolest innovation of this year's game is icon passing. By clicking the thumb stick, you will see the icons of everyone on the team. By pressing the various buttons, you can queue up a number of passes. If the defense intercepts at any point, you will have to restart the process, but if you manage to work around them, you can get a serious string of passes going. Cycling like this has never really worked to its fullest potential in a videogame, but this innovation edges it ever closer to the real thing. From this mode, you can also double tap an icon to produce one-timers, which is an excellent way to score. In fact, on easier difficulty settings, if you excel at cycling the puck, scoring will almost become too easy. Luckily, on higher settings, the defense does a better job of reacting, and the goalie manages to save a lot more chances.

Another great innovation from the why-did-it-take-so-long department is the flawless implementation of backwards skating both on offense and defense. This is especially helpful to face front and defend, but in the offensive zone, it can be used to make space for passing and shooting. To give you even more ammo on offense, a goalie deke function has been added. This allows you to use a button plus the right analog to put a move on the goaltender as you approach. This is invaluable in shootouts, which have become a much bigger part of the game. In addition, it offers a little more open-ice creativity than allowed previously.

This is an amazing hockey game at any price, but the new features, including momentum and icon passing, make it not only the best but most realistic game on the market. Graphics didn't make a huge leap, but that's what the 360 is all about. For now, this is the best game and the best value... and isn't that what it's all about?

[Sava]

I bought NHL2006. It's good. But the in game menus were designed by morons. I'll post my full analysis tomorrow.

I just alt-tabbed after the end of the game after I won 6-4 over Vancouver. Listen to this bull****. King on VAN gets the first star... 2 goals and 1 assist. But get this, I have Hossa on my team, he scores the game winning goal and has 2 goals and 2 assists, but is number 2 star. WTF??

So even though I won, I alt-tabbed and terminated the program so it didn't save the result. Tomorrow I will replay the game without bull**** like that happening!

Asher: Well, I'll be getting NHL2k6 for PS2 also. I'll let you know which I think is best.

Are you going to buy NHL2k6 for Xbox360 even though you already have it for regular Xbox?

[Asher]

Of course, it was only $19.99.

[Asher]

The reviews I'm reading for NHL 2006 are less than flattering.

From Gamespot:

Mainly, there really isn't any one big, new feature in this year's game. The dynasty mode, for example, feels pretty much like a carbon copy of last year's dynasty, warts and all. You still have to deal with restrictive owner goals set for you at the outset of each season, and said goals still play into the team's perceived business philosophies.

There's also still not much of an offseason progression here. No specific callouts of the draft or the beginning of free agency exist beyond single e-mails letting you know what dates on the calendar signify each (the calendar itself displays no hint as such). And in either event, your participation is minimal. You still don't really have to scout rookies at all (and depending on how much upgrade money you spend on scouts, varying degrees of reliable rookie info will be available at your fingertips on draft day), and you can still cherry-pick the best free agents on July 1, as no player stops to entertain other offers. Also, there's no salary cap at all in the dynasty mode, and there's not even a hard team budget (like NHL 2K6 features). So unless your owner has specific concerns about team salaries, you can just go buck wild with player signings.

Speaking of bizarre issues, there's one big new problem in the dynasty mode that wasn't present last year. Specifically, it relates to the scheduling of games. What happens is that whatever schedule you're given your first year ends up being the exact same game schedule you get every year. If you play against the Sharks in your first game and the Blues in your last game, that will be the case every year, as will every other game in between. Not to mention that we found ourselves playing a lot of the same playoff opponents over and over again, at one point playing against Calgary in the finals three years straight. While that's only somewhat of a leap, having the exact same schedule every single year is simply an impossibility, and it's clearly just some kind of glaring oversight.

The online play is pretty much in the same boat as the dynasty mode. The game is online for both the PS2 and Xbox once again, and the usual roster of features, like head-to-head play, quick tournaments, lobbies, and downloadable rosters, are all available. The online play experience was hampered last year by some noticeable lag between button presses and onscreen action, and it seems like the PS2 version suffers from a similar problem. Trying to time things like faceoffs and one-timers is harder than it ought to be simply because the controls don't respond as well as they ought to. The Xbox Live play seems smoother, assuming you actually make it into a game. The Xbox game ships with a glitch that effectively prevents you from connecting to another player unless you first enter into a voice chat session and then connect from there. This seems like the sort of thing that ought to be able to be fixed relatively easily either on the server side or via a patch, but it's in the game right now, and it's pretty obnoxious that such an issue made it into the final game to begin with.

Fans of EA's brand of hockey will undoubtedly take something positive away from NHL 06, but even they will find it hard to deny that the game isn't everything that it could have been. 06 just doesn't do anything significant for the franchise, as it just adds some ancillary features that are neat to have but don't ultimately change the face of the game, leaving some of the most important (and, in some cases, most flawed) aspects of it practically in stasis. It's good hockey, but it's not great hockey. And there are better choices available.

What kind of better choices would he be talking about...

They gave NHL 2006 a 7.6, and NHL 2K6 an 8.5.

The kicker is NHL 2006 still costs more.

[Sava]

The reviewer seems to complain about a lot of meaningless things.

I'm glad there's no salary cap.

In Madden 2006 they hard coded the salary cap into the game and you can't turn it off.

I had to download an editor and change players' salaries to make a good team.

Funny how the review doesn't talk about the most important thing: GAMEPLAY!

Here's what I posted about NHL 2006 on another forum:

So I went out and bought it today. I was lucky, the girl at my local Gamestop said she had the last one when I called and held it for me (awesome).

Okay, a couple things. So I'm installing the game right, and reading the box. On the back of the box it says, "SUBSCRIPTION FEES AND FEATURE UPDATES CAN BE FOUND AT www.easports.com"... I think to myself, okay, nice marketing. Tell people they can go to your site to FIND FEES. Dumbasses.

Then halfway through installation it says, "Insert DVD 2". Uhhh. Okay. I have the PC-CD version. But whatever.

These little things may not seem important, but it just seems like EA has been sloppy this year. Don't get me wrong, I've been playing this game and it's great. But it just seems like it could have been polished a little better.

Okay. The menus. First off. The main menus has a section for ROSTERS. That's fine. But then there's also a section for RULES AND OPTIONS. And when you go in there, there's also a subsection for ROSTERS. A little redundant are we?

The roster interface is horrible. It just lists players alphabetically. And it shows their name, position, and ranking. That's it. It also will not let you sort by ranking or position. There's no good way to tell how many players you have on a team. And there's no way to tell how many players there are at each position. Also, moving players from team to team is cumbersome. There isn't a trade function per se, you just can select one player on a team at a time and click MOVE and it shifts him to the other team.

As expected, the rosters are out of whack. I'm not going to list a whole bunch of things. But suffice it so say, Theoren Fleury is on the Blackhawks, k. And speaking of the Blackhawks, according to NHL 2006, Brian Sutter is still their head coach, despite being fired in June (on my birthday in fact).

So after making a superstar team , I go into Dynasty mode. I start to notice NHL2006 likes redundancy. There are usually two ways to do things. At the team select menu, after you enter your GM's name and select your team and stuff, you can either select CONTINUE or START DYNASTY. Both do the same thing.

The main dynasty menu is about as expected. There are these icons at the top that you click on to get the different menus (calender, coach options, GM options, etc.). It would be nice to know what the icons do instead of having to click on each one to find what I want. Maybe hovering over it and having it say what it is? But whatever. Minor thing.

Another complaint. The edit lines menu in coaches options. It sucks. Instead of being able to just click on a guy, or drag and drop names into slots like NHL2004 (which was a great menu) they have these stupid boxes. It's a pain to get a player's name highlighted. Then you have to move to the bottom right to click SELECT to bring up a popup menu to select a guy. Buy you cant just select a guy, you have to use the scroll bar to scroll the highlighter down to him. Another minor inconvenience. It seems EA just did not do enough basic beta testing to make navigating through menus easy.

Okay, so I finally get through all the bull**** and get into the game. I actually had to play with the slider settings and start and exit a few times before I got things how I like them. So I'm playing and things are going good. One thing I notice, and this is my complaint going back to at least NHL 2004, the computer players never get penalties. But my players, my AI players, seem to get penalties away from the play. AND THIS JUST PISSES ME OFF.

And EA added a wonderful new feature. YOUR GOALIE CAN NOW GET STUPID PENALTIES. That's right. Some guy skated by my goalie (Robert Luongo) and Luongo took a lumberjack chop at him. It was like ****ing Paul Bunyan.

I can't wait for someone to release an editor to I can adjust the penalty ratings. I don't know how much more of this I can take!

I'm having a lot of fun in Dynasty mode so far. I'm 7 games into my season.

NHL2k6 for PS2 is backordered so I won't be getting it for a while, if at all. I'm enjoying NHL 06. Maybe if I see NHL2k6 on usenet I'll check it out.

But even if NHL06 is mediocre to above average and NHL2k6 is good, I'd rather play an above average PC game than a good console game.

Just my personal preference.

NHLview editor should be out any day now so I can adjust ratings.

[Sava]

I should say this Asher...

I'm not saying that NHL06 is a superior game from NHL2k6. I haven't even played NHL2k6.

My position is that by judging NHL06 on it's own merits, it's a good game. Having said that, I'm sure I will enjoy NHL2k6.

Here's my dilemna. I don't particularly like playing video games on consoles. I wish NHL2k6 came out for PC. However, given the following hypotheticals, here's what I would do:

if NHL06 and NHL2k6 were both on PC (or only on any console), I would probably play NHL2k6.

But the fact is, NHL06 is on PC and NHL2k6 isn't.

So for me, the choice is, do I play NHL06 on PC or NHL2k6 on PS2. The choice is simple really. PC is superior. And don't give me any Xbox is superior to PS2 crap. Xbox is slightly better than PS2, but not enough that I'm gonna go blow $200 on an Xbox just for one game.

What can be learned from this whole discussion? Competition is better! Choice is better!

[Asher]

NHL2K6 for the PS2 has been delayed.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Asher
NHL2K6 for the PS2 has been delayed.

doh!