NHL 2K7 review

It’s that time of year again, when the gaming worlds sports franchises get their annual update. These can go either of two ways, sometimes they do a complete revamp, build a new game engine and create everything from scratch, or they can just take last year's model, update the rosters, give it a few tweaks, an extra gameplay feature or two, and a bit of a graphical polish.

2K Games has taken the latter path with the latest instalment in its NHL franchise. Some would argue that this is just lazy game design, but there’s always the old adage 'If it isn’t broke don’t fix it', there’s always mixed opinion and it’s rare you make everyone happy which ever way you go.

Tried and Tested

At its heart NHL 2K7 is pretty much identical to its predecessor but this isn’t really a bad thing.. Gameplay is still very much pick up and play with your controllers left analogue stick moving your player across the ice and its face buttons controlling the main actions of your player, A button to pass, X to shoot, that sort of thing. It's all very easy to get to grips with and gives the game an arcade style feel. There have been more advanced controls added for the new gameplay features, but more on them later. Game modes too are largely unchanged, career mode can be played in two different ways, Season and Franchise.

Season mode is pretty much your standards sports game career mode, you play the games with very little in the way of management decisions. Franchise adds to Season with management decisions, you still play the games as usual but get more say in the hiring and firing of your squad, including the coach. There's plenty more game modes other than career though, you can also play tournaments, on a mini rink, or even on a frozen over pond. All these can be played with four players and every player can play on any side, either two on two or three on one, it's up to you.

It’s Party Time

Then there's the party games - battle mode and elimination. Elimination is just played like a league, with the lowest scoring team of four being knocked out every time all teams have played each other. Battle mode is something completely different though being just four players on the ice with loads of different game variants. These are a lot of fun with a group of friends, some more than others, and are a nice bit of relief when you’ve had enough of playing straight hockey. There are also a few mini-games to be found up in your Skybox, there you can take a break from the ice and play some well known American bar games. You get a choice between Shuffleboard, Air hockey and a trivia quiz game, but to be honest they aren’t a lot of fun.

All the games modes can be played with one to four players but are best played with friends If you don't have any friends though, or even if you do, there’s Xbox Live. Online gameplay is more limited though, with only straight hockey available, which can be played in either a player or ranked match. Up to eight players can play in an online match, four on each Xbox 360 and even with that many players everything runs smoothly with no lag to speak of. There’s also lobbies that you can join, where you can meet up with your online friends and/or complete strangers and either just chat with them or play games.

New and Improved?

Most obvious amongst the games improvements from last year are the graphics, which have been given a bit of a polish since last year. They still aren't great though, looking little better than an Xbox game, but still better than last year. The improvements are most evident when watching the games cut scenes, mainly on the rink, things look a lot better when the players prepare for a face off than they do when viewing the crowd, which looks to be made up from a very limited gene pool, when a point is scored. Changes have been made to the games audio too, the cheesy rock music is still there, as is the competent commentary, but now you get a choice of the two in game. Not exactly an improvement, but the commentary does get on your nerves sometimes so it's nice to have the option of music instead.

More important than the graphics and sound though are the new moves that are at your disposal on the ice. These give you a little more control over the rest of your team so that you aren't just one man playing with AI. Pressure Control allows you to co-ordinate your team to put pressure on certain members of the opposition. Crease Control allows you to take direct control of your goalkeeper, handy when your goals being rushed and the bulk of your team is to far away to be any help. Pro control changes the control scheme totally, once activated three of your controllers face buttons and it's two shoulder bumpers are mapped to your players, and passing to them is as simple as pressing their button. All of these control types use the right analogue stick to activate them, which can be a bit fiddly as you've usually got your right thumb on one of the buttons, but after some practice it gets easier. You also get OTF coaching, which is accessed from your D pad, which is used to issue commands to your whole team, go offense, defence, that sort of thing.

Jolly Hockey Sticks?

There's at least one thing they haven't improved which they should have done though, and that's your team mates AI, I occasionally found my own team mates crashing in to me, an autosave wouldn't have hurt either, but they're just small niggles really. Overall the game plays a decent game of hockey, the new features, whilst not immediately accessible , do add to the gameplay. Whether you're a hockey fan or not this game can be a lot of fun with some friends. If you have last year's offering though there's not a lot added to justify the expense of a next gen game just for a few extra gameplay tweaks, unless you're one of the few hockey nuts out there.