NHL 2K7

"A waste of the little money that I spent for it!"

I have always bought hockey games from EA Sports. Ever since NHL 98, I've bought their NHL game almost every year. This year, I decided to buy NHL 2K7, mainly because the new generation of video game systems were upon us, and I wanted to give 2K a chance because EA Sports NHL games of recent years have had pretty stupid A.I. So I went to my local game store and picked this up. I remember being pleasantly surprised at the cheaper price of his game. Well I wasn't happy for long.

It started when I saw on the screen that someone wanted to fight me. I tried to initiate the fight, but it didn't work, so I paused my game and looked in the instruction manual. It didn't say. To this day, I still don't know how to initiate a fight. Whenever it came on I just pressed as many buttons as I could, hoping that one of them started the fight. No luck, but that's just a minor complaint.

The graphics weren't bad, but they weren't spectacular. Compared to the XBOX360 and PS3 version, they look pretty average, but that's to be expected. They were good enough to keep me pretty content. I do have to say that the ice was done really well though. I didn't like most of the tracks that were put into this game, but luckily I was able to put my own tracks into this game. That made the music great, and the high point of this game. The sound effects were also pretty standard and didn't take away from the gameplay. My only issue with the sounds were the commentators. Their comments get old really, really fast since they are constantly repeating the same line, and after a while I turned the commentators off.

Gameplay in hockey games is supposed to be the most important part right? The designers are supposed to focus on creating a realistic and fun hockey environment, aren't they? Well they didn't quite pull it off here.
Remember when I said that in recent EA Sports hockey games, the A.I. is really stupid? Well in NHL 2K7, the forwards are ok, and the defencemen are actually quite smart, but the goalies are incredibly stupid. After a few games, I was forced to go into the options menu to put all of the goalies stats to 100 because the games had scores like 15-12, even in the harder difficulty levels. That worked a bit, but didn't work enough. When I would face my younger brother, all he would have to do is skate to my net, go left, then right, then manual shoot left and he would score every time. EVERY TIME! That leads me to my next point. The game is very unrealistic. Skates go through legs, gloves go through shoulders and players go through nets. One time my brother was in the middle of a shootout, and tried to do a wrap around to confuse the goalie. And on some occasions, if you swerve around the goalie to much, he will go to the side of his crease and just stay there, leaving the net wide open. Here's an example of the terrible glitches in this game. Now normally you can't go around the net, because the referee stops the shot, but he didn't know that yet because he hadn't played much yet, and I wasn't planning on telling him. But this time, for some strange reason, his stick with the puck, went through the side of the net while he went around the back. My goalie made some weird twitching movement, and it was called a goal. When things like that happen, it's enough to realize that you bought a pile of crap.

Considering this was my first 2K sports hockey game, I wasn't expecting much, and what I got was even less than that. I don't recommend buying this game whatsoever. Don't get won over by the "special new controls". They're nice but what's the point if all you need to do is swerve left and right to score? I know my score may seem pretty low but trust me...don't buy this game. DON'T!!

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/07