NHL 09 : The latest installment of a franchise that does not like me.
SD-DEFICIENT
Story : With the Leafs falling out of playoff contention, Mats Sundin was the focus of numerous trade rumours as the February 26 trade deadline approached. On February 25, he stated that he would not waive the no trade clause in his contract. He stated that he did not believe in being a "rental player" and that if he won the Stanley Cup, he wanted to do it over the course of a whole season.
Sundin became a free agent on July 1, 2008, although the Maple Leafs gave the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Rangers special rights to negotiate with him until then.[3] On the day of free agency, the Vancouver Canucks offered Sundin a two-year $20-million dollar contract which, if signed, would make him the highest paid player in the NHL. The Rangers, Canadiens and Leafs also made contract offers. Attempting to entice him to sign with the Canucks, numerous Vancouver businesses have extended Sweden-centered special offers, such as a Volvo and IKEA products.[4]
In late October, Sundin began training in Los Angeles, stating he desires to be in top condition before signing with any team.[5]
(source – Wikipedia)
I made an oath to review every 2008 release that I spend an adequate amount of time playing and I’m going to stick to it, whether I’m an expert on the source material or not. No, I’m not a hockey fan. I don’t have anything against our great Canadian sport, but I’m not going to go out of my way to watch every single Leafs game as everyone keeps their fingers crossed that they might make the playoffs. And I can’t rally behind, say, a good team for fear of being labeled a fair-weather fan either, so as far as hockey goes, I’m in a lose-lose situation. I guess part of it is also my lack of an attention span keeps me unable to keep myself enthralled for the 2 odd hours that a hockey game can last, for the 80 odd games in the season. This puts me in a very odd position, being a male that doesn’t watch hockey and being a citizen of Leafs Nation.
And then there’s me and hockey games. I like the stupid ones – Ice Hockey and Blades of Steel on the NES made for some fun times. Wayne Gretzky’s 3D hockey on the N64 was a satisfying experience if just for the 50-goal games. The actual EA Sports NHL games are a bit different; perhaps because they’re trying to be realistic and I lack the brainpower needed to run a proper play or frequently change lines. Or perhaps it’s because I could care less about player stats, scouting talent, salary caps, all that team management nonsense.
Anyways, NHL 09. The very first mistake the game makes is to not let me play it right out of the gate. When the game boots up, I’m thrown into a tutorial level trying to explain the mechanics of this “skill stick”. The problem with having this thrown at me from the start is that the first time I actually booted up the disc, my friend is sitting right next to me and he wants to jump into a game right freaking now.
So after awhile, our game finally starts and we’re quickly seeing why the game felt so obliged to throw out that odd tutorial; it really wants us to use that skill stick. It takes awhile but ultimately we start to get the hang of things and this skill stick business starts to make sense – it’s a clever way to condense shooting and dekeing into a single motion that kind of almost resembles using a hockey stick. The “skill stick” on offense becomes the “killing stick” on defense, as the same motion is used to body check players, and boy did we have fun checking people around. Whatever ragdoll physics engine the folks at EA threw into this game works wonders as bodies have a wonderful habit of getting knocked the hell down in this game. It’s nowhere near the level of surrealism as, say, NHL Hitz or Hit the Ice (I’m really starting to pull obscure titles out of my ass now!) but more than enough to put a smile on my face.
NHL 09 can be a bit of an overwhelming game. There are a ton of different gameplay modes, and I could probably list an eighth of them. It’s hard for me to try and keep track of them all when all of the fonts in this game are super-small; something that’s become a running problem in many games and in particular sports games. The developer assumes that every player has an HDTV and thus it’s safe to use smaller, less crisp lettering throughout the game in perhaps a vague attempt to appear sophisticated. I’m sorry EA, but I’d doubt that even half the people buying this game will be so fortunate as to have a cutting-edge high definition television in their living room.
(I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce a new label for games with this same issue – whenever I tag a game as “SD DEFICIENT” in a review, it means that the game wasn’t thinking about us and our ordinary TV sets. I’m looking at you, Soul Calibur 4!)
…well going back to the original point, the game has a ton of modes, and I guess that’s great for someone that’s going to play through all of those modes. Me, I was just all confused and disheartened by it all, and ultimately opted to just play one exhibition game after another. I will admit that the option to play through career mode as just a single player instead of the whole team is intriguing, and that the game is smart in its approach to the single player dynamic; even going so far as to provide an arrow to show where your player should be in terms of the decided play. You can also play this mode online with a full team, but the issue with online sports games is that people are going to be sore losers and quit when things aren’t going their way, and when ten people are playing a single game, the odds are against all 9 of your online mates being fair sports.
If you were expecting some kind of point-by-point analysis of how accurately NHL 09 portrays hockey, well you must’ve missed the opening paragraph. I couldn’t tell you if the passing play is more believable or if the one-timer scores too many goals. Most of games had scores that didn’t go above the number 5, so I guess it’s realistic in that regard. All my friends tell me that this is the greatest game of all time so perhaps it’s a great game to get if you like hockey. But the game ultimately left me yearning for the days of NBA Jam and NFL Blitz, silly games where you didn’t need a mandatory tutorial at the start of the game because there was only two buttons used, and the highest honour one could achieve was to make the announcer scream “Boomshakalaka!” The supposed “arcade” style sports games of today have it weird, emphasizing the use of tricks to power up your players. Or there’s the modern day Blitz games that have completely convoluted the game with their bizarre variation of bullet time. NHL 09 may be a great hockey game, but it didn’t do enough to stimulate my ADD-ridden mind.
Pros : I’m pretty sure that this is an old feature, but I’ll always pop for being able to use retro jerseys, regardless of whether or not they’re before my time.
Cons : The Leafs don’t have low stats. Nor does any team. Are we trying to appease the masses here by making everyone close to on the same level? The commentary is also boring.
3 ½ stars. Take that rating however you’d like.
I’ll be a critical, over-analytical jerk when I review the next Smackdown game.
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