Adam Hall

Publisher: EA | Developer: EA | ETA: Out Now | Price: £39.99 Inc VAT.

I hate sports. The most physical activity I do every week is pushing the keys consecutively on my keyboard for short bursts, and even that leaves me gasping for air as I a lower myself to the ground with the intent of ensuing a painless black-out!
So naturally, a rage against sports games is intertwined with my very essence since anything that reminds me of all the pain and anguish you have to endure to get anywhere near an ‘adequate’ performance is undoubtedly a bad thing!

With such a tainted opinion, I went into playing NHL2004 expecting to be horribly disappointed, slam my Xbox controller into the floor and walk away thinking about how right I am that sport games suck! But did that happen? Well it did actually! No I’m joking, it actually didn’t!

After that insightful demonstration of my vast comic intellect, I should probably get around to reviewing this bastard of a game, and by ‘bastard’ I mean awesome, enthralling, tantalising lovely sex!

GAMEPLAY
Firstly, I’d just like to make a note directed at the other sport game haters out there (and believe me, there’s a few); don’t overlook this game just because it’s a sport. It’s packing more appeal than the NSPCC and I’d be willing to bet it’s got something for even the most close-minded gamers.
The main premise of NHL is, strangely enough, to play as much damned ice hockey as you can possibly handle and although this may sound like it would get repetitive, no two games are the same. You can always improve your shooting technique, or your passing ability. There’s forever something to advance and the best thing is, you’ve got an immense league of over 70 games to hone your skills.
Of course if the management elements of NHL appeal to you about as much as jumping off the Eiffel tower and landing on a seat-less bicycle, the game comes with an ‘Instant Rivalry’ function that throws you straight into the action alongside some randomly chosen players pitted against a randomly chosen team! This serves a ‘pick-up-and-play’ purpose for the game, but if the reason you get games is to play and COMPLETE them, you’re going to have to endure the league tables because Instant Rivalry will get you nowhere.

The only predominant cause of erroneous circumstances within NHL is the camera and how it can sometimes become extremely annoying. When I play such an attention demanding video game I can’t help but find it infinitely useful to actually be able to SEE the character I’m controlling and I don’t know if EA have some revolutionary alternative, but us old-school people like to stick to tradition but the camera in NHL2004 doesn’t seem to understand this logic and instead plants itself behind barriers and similarly awkward locations and can quite drastically hinder your ability to control your player. This is a rarity, however, so it shouldn’t be a deterrent!

I was quite surprised when I first played NHL to learn that it sports quite a steep learning curve. It’s somewhat strange to be honest; you can read the manual 17 times and feel like you’ve memorised the buttons, but when you actually start playing you’ll forget everything and resort to panic mashing where upon you’ll realise you probably should’ve started by playing the ‘Open Ice’ option that gives you a little stress-free practice and on-the-fly gameplay hints. In saying that, however, playing the real game is still a quattuordecillion times more intense and even if you play the practice mode religiously for a few days, you’ll undoubtedly still require a certain amount of warming.

GRAPHICS
Now NHL2004 could be, in my opinion, susceptible to underestimation. The camera angle that you play through 90% of the time is located at a fair distance from the players, of course, to allow you maximum vision whilst retaining an adequate level of detail, but the problem with this is that you can’t really see the finer details that those wonderfully talented people at EA have established like nice reflections on the barrier glass as the hockey players hop over the sides to enter the rink and the comical, yet wide range of range of facial expressions.
Now by no means does NHL2004 push the Xbox to its limits, it probably wouldn’t get even get entered for one of the best looking games on the console, but the point is they are aesthetically pleasing and forget what people say, good graphics DO make a game just that much better!