NHL 09

"By far EA's best effort."

This year's NHL title from EA is certainly the best they've put out, at least in the context of our current generation of game consoles. EA has gone through a few different engines over the years; '02's was awfully arcade oriented and would be badly embarrassed by Sega's 2k3 a year later. '04 was a reboot, but while the Dynasty mode was surprisingly deep, the actual game play was pretty shallow and felt barebones. In the last couple years though, EA has taken yet another engine, one that works this time, and improved on it year after year yielding NHL 09. I think the difference in progress, and improvement between the 2k series and the NHL series has convinced me that EA's series is now the better of the two, for this year anyway. NHL 09 still doesn't quite feel like playing real hockey, but it sure looks like it and for once playing with realistic strategy is not only rewarding but arguably necessary to win a game at any setting above the "Rookie" difficulty.

Graphics: 9/10
There isn't a whole lot to criticize here. Long ago the 2k series proved graphics meant relatively little, and that principle stands here, because even if the graphics are pretty good, they certainly aren't the focus of the game at all. There is some noticeable slowdown that occurs repeatedly during cinematic sequences like the pre-game player entries and such, but it isn't anything worth freaking out over. There could still be some more variety with the player faces, especially the hair, but generally players look somewhat similar to their real-life counterparts. The presentation is certainly lacking, especially when you compare it to a different EA Sports game like Madden, but I suppose that since the NFL is more about presentation, hype and analysis than the NHL is, they sort of have an excuse for leaving out the simulated broadcast stuff. Overall, the graphics here do their job quite well and I've yet to see any real visual glitches or noticeable pop-up.

Sound: 10/10
Well the soundtrack is yet another collection of mediocre songs pimped out by record labels to EA in order to fund development costs. I wanted to slit my wrists when I heard rap music playing in a hockey game. I've never experienced something so disturbing at a real NHL game, but then I haven't gone to see the Oilers get their behinds spanked for a couple years now, so maybe I'm simply out of touch. Still though, disgusting. Mercifully, you have the option to use custom playlists from your hard drive or simply mute Arena Music and Menu Music. Nice save EA.

The commentary is quite well done. I noticed some (ok, a lot) of phrases reused from past versions of the game, but Gary Thorne and Bill Clement are a very good duo. They call it fairly accurately, inject some quips where necessary and don't have any really annoying playcalling vices (hearing "Holy MAKINAW!" every time someone scored or made an impressive save would cause me to impale myself.) I was mildly impressed by their context commentary in Dynasty mode, where they'd frequently comment on how the present teams were doing and if they were on winning streaks, etc. More player-specific color commentary is always welcome and a potential area for improvement, but as it stands right now the commentary is pretty much everything you could ask for.

Gameplay: 9.5/10
I'm going to be specific and focus on the way the game actually plays. Gameplay is a term with a wide interpretative breadth when you use to it to refer to sports games. I'm not talking about Dynasty mode, or how well the menus are designed; just the hockey itself.

First off, the checking is much more realistic than probably any hockey game has been before it. No longer can you lay people flat by standing beside them and pressing the check button, you need to have some momentum to cause them to move. This alters the game significantly, by making the player focus much more on poke-checking, stick-lifting and actually playing man to man or zone instead of using player X to crush some guy and steal the puck from him. Even on the Rookie and default Pro difficulty levels you'll find being over-aggressive on defence will get you burned. Instead, you actually have to play with correct positioning, cover players, block passes and relentlessly poke-check in order to have a chance of causing a turnover or at least preventing a scoring chance. The intrinsic difficulty of the game is much, much higher than it has been in any hockey before that I've ever played and you have to learn how to play the game, especially on defence, with a high sense of awareness. This probably belongs in the Graphics category or "Presentation" category had I written one, but it is directly related to the last point about awareness. I will never understand WHY the default camera setting is on "Ice". This is seriously the worst camera to play the game on, because it absolutely neuters your vision of the ice by being so low and zoomed in. Unless you get good at the vision control feature (which takes time), you'll be forced to make blind passes left and right in hopes of setting up chances. Not a good way to introduce people to the game at all. Play on "Classic" view if you want a chance of being able to control the puck accurately.

In the offensive zone the game really shines at times. Cycling the puck becomes possible because the AI doesn't behave as though every player of the opposing team is high on Crystal Meth as used to be common fare in hockey videogames. Instead, they generally play positional defence, forcing you to make real decisions about where and how to move the puck to set up a legitimate scoring opportunity. You'll find yourself aiming for deflections and garbage goals far more than one-timers here, with the occasional wrist shot goal which actually feels possible and not like a fluke when it does happen. No longer is simply shooting a wasted chance.

The way in which the AI actually perform passes also deserves mention because they generally put pucks in the right places (not so much through traffic though) instead of unpredictably trying to send it through the opponents' skates for what seems like some sort of fun challenge or something. Switching players without the puck is far more troublesome though. On offence, the game seems to want to switch to the player closest to the puck. That makes sense, right? Too bad the guy closest to the puck is usually in front of the goalie getting ravaged by the other team's defensemen or facing the wrong way making him absolutely useless in trying to pick up rebounds, whereas the guy streaking towards the net on the side where the puck has come loose takes two or three player switches to gain control of. On defence, particularly on rushes, the game is absolutely determined to have you play the defensemen when all you want to do is play as the guy behind the attacker so you can lift his stick and steal the puck nice and easy but sometimes this proves absolutely impossible as pressing the switch player trigger will often simply cycle between whoever happen to be in front of the attacker. This is annoying, but it's more of an idiosyncratic flaw than it is a real glaring one, because you eventually adapt to it and it becomes second-nature, should you not be deterred by these frustrations and reach that level of familiarity with the game.

Overall, I'm both very impressed with NHL 09's basic gameplay but also very surprised at what seems like it's blatant inaccessibility and challenge. Coupled with the controls (upcoming), NHL 09 is not a game you can easily pick up and enjoy as someone inexperienced with videogames or hockey games which is an approach quite polarized from EA's past efforts. Me? I applaud it, let the inept play with their classic controls or play a simpler game that barely resembles hockey. On the other hand, I feel a little for the casuals who could easily be estranged by the complex gameplay and controls.

Controls: 8/10
I find the XBOX360 controller pretty clunky and inherently flawed to begin with (certainly an improvement from the original system's controller, which was a borderline abomination) and while NHL makes pretty good use of it, the scheme is opaque and has an intense learning curve. This is mostly due to the skill stick. For people who played last year's game, they have no reason to be afraid, but for newcomers using the right-stick to wind up, shoot and deke doesn't just strike you as awkward; it's absolutely absurd for the first few games. Learning to use the skill stick well is probably NHL 09's greatest challenge, apart from maybe realizing you can't win games by running people over and firing off one-timers constantly. Overall I think the skill stick is neat and once you do gain control of it, the whole control scheme seems simpler and more intuitive, but I find using the right analog stick to do all these things is just a hell of a lot more imprecise than simple button presses, even if you do learn to excel at it. Like any other modern hockey videogame, there are a hell of a lot of buttons to learn, but it seems more simplified and the complex commands seem more intuitive compared to 2k's set-up. You can switch to classic controls, but in doing so you kill a lot of the game's gameplay depth.

Replayability/Depth: 9/10
Sports games, good ones anyway, tend to simply hold lots of replay value from the get-go. NHL 09's gameplay is difficult and complex but all the more rewarding, so making a judgment on replayability based on the way the game plays alone I see no reason why it wouldn't keep you coming back for more. Most of the "depth" I'm talking about lies in Dynasty mode and Be-A-Pro mode.

Be-A-Pro is very interesting, as it lets you control a single player throughout their career and develop their skills through gaining experience points in a pseudo-RPG sort of way. I definitely enjoyed what I played of this mode and it strikes me as a sort of alternate to Dynasty mode for the player who is more concerned with the first person experience of a career than the fickle franchise operations of what can be a GM position alienated from the actual game. The way games are played also changes in Be-A-Pro, as control is limited to your character alone. This might be challenging at first, but it teaches you a lot about how to play in position and feels far more immersive than being the omnipotent 5-man manipulator up in the rafters.

Dynasty is still dynasty for the most part. It seems a little more behind in depth compared to Madden but the experience-point based player progression system seems a heck of lot more satisfying than the unknowable, seemingly random yearly attribute changes in other games. If you have a player with a high potential, you can actually develop him now, instead of having him sit at 70 overall for his entire career. I haven't gone all that far into Dynasty mode (and few players do), so I can't really comment on long-term developments (Remember in NHL 04 when everyone on your team was 99 overall by the 20th year?) but from what I've seen it functions well and it functions relatively predictably which is definitely a good thing in the context of Dynasty mode because it now feels like there is a strategy involved in improving players' stats instead of just winning lots of game (which breaks the game since winning teams get better and losing teams get worse.)

Recommended?
Yes, but only if you're going to buy it and invest the time to learn how to play. There's a tough learning curve, but the game will probably change the way you feel about hockey videogames permanently. For my money this is the biggest breakthrough in hockey gaming since NHL 2k3, and that's saying a lot.

Total (With transparent weighting calculations)
Graphics: 9/10*(1.5) = 13.5/15
Sound: 10/10*(1) = 10/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10*(4) = 38/40
Controls: 8/10*(2) = 16/20
Replay/Depth: 9/10*(1.5) = 13.5/15
13.5/15+10/10+38/40+16/20+13.5/15 = 90/100

Final Score: 90%
GameFAQS rounded score: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/14/09

Game Release: NHL 09 (US, 09/09/08)