NHL 2K6
Thursday, 27 December 2007 00:00
The last ice hockey game I got so engrossed in was way back in around '91 on the Mega Drive and here I am, 2 console generations later and getting that buzz again.When I say buzz, I mean that tingling feeling you get on the top of your head when you're playing well and you've just assisted a goal or even scored yourself, aaaahh, great stuff. I'm not really a fan of real life ice hockey, but I like playing it on consoles.
You really have such a wide choice of the kind of game you want to play, from a quick game right up to full management style play. To get a feel of the game, jumping into a 'Quick Game' is easy enough, just pick your team and away you go, but if you want to get into proper managerial gaming, choosing the Franchise game mode will soon get you sorted. Choose your staff from quite a long list, each one with their rating of A to F, you'll obviously need to choose decent staff and you should be able to afford a good team to get you going.
I'm not really into the manager type of gaming when it comes to sports games (unless it's a proper '
Shuffleboard takes a bit more control than just waving the stick around to hit the puck, but it's still pretty easy to get the hold of, it's just a case of sliding your pucks into the sections and keeping them there to score. Then there's the trivia, unless you're a big fan of NHL ice hockey and it's history, you won't get very far here. It's your typical trivia, some of the questions are about the game and it's rules, some are which team won what, when or where and so on.
If there was one thing I had a complaint about, that would be the commentating. Oh how that can get irritating when the one guy tries to say puck as many times in one statement as possible, at one point, you feel like shouting, 'SHUT THE F**K UP ABOUT PUCKS'. The only way to stop the suffering is to pause the game at the start of a game and go into the options and set the Presentation setting to 'In Stands' or set the various volumes yourself. You can really make the game your own with all the settings in there, I could go on about them, but it would take so much, you'd be asleep by the time I'd finished!
The characters have great animation with nice detail on the clothing, you can really tell how gaming is progressing with the amount of detail that is capable of being shown and even while playing. Rather than look brilliant when in FMV mode and crap in game, now it all looks the same, of course, a few details are dumbed down for the gameplay, but it still looks good. The crowd looks good, but you soon start seeing the same person over and over with variations, such as slightly different coloured hair or a beard, yet it doesn't look bad and once you're into the game, you don't tend to take that much notice anyway.
The soundtrack isn't too good, but that's usually on a low setting anyway and you hardly notice it due to there being no particular artist you've heard of. The arena announcer doesn't only announce when goals are scored, listen closely and you hear him announce other things like someone has left their car lights on or something. You do get a good sense of atmosphere when you're playing as the crowd start to get excited if the action is getting good.
Overall, the game is clean and well presented with everything needed to make an ideal ice hockey game. Hardcore fans of NHL will certainly like it due to the in-depth info of all the players in there and fans of ice hockey games will like it due to the smoothness of the action and the easiness of the controls as well as the ability to download extra content through the Marketplace.
8.3
