The Magic Satchel

That is the basic message I get when I see all the work that has gone in to making the 360 / PS3 versions of NHL08 so interesting, and then look at what they are trying to pass off as a new game for 2008 on the PC.

PS3 and 360 are getting adaptive AI, one of the coolest ideas I have heard of in a long time. The game will actually adjust to your style of play and take steps to prevent you from always getting the one timer or whatever it is that you consider your money play. Brilliant!

My biggest complaint for the past few years is how easy the game has become to score. It used to be that there was only one move that had a 90% chance of getting you that all important goal, but these days it seems there are a dozen or more. Don’t get me wrong , winning is fun… but I like it to be a bit of a challenge.

In the last few years the only challenges I have had is “how many players can get a hat trick in one game?”(6), “how many players can break 10 points in a single game?”(4), and “how many games in a row can I go with at least a 10 goal margin of victory?”(65).

You lucky console people also get to design your own plays, so that when you get in a situation you don’t have to scream at the monitor for that dumb AI teammate to move to the front of the net… you can make it so he does that and is ready for the pass. Again, I love this feature because it means that never again will you have to bump into a teammate to wake him up and remind him he is part of the play.

Add to this you get goalie mode (3rd person camera to control the goalie), more skill stick control (not a good thing in my opinion) and a new skating engine, I don’t blame console owners for being excited about this upcoming release.

For PC (and PS2), they are advertising an improved skill stick as their biggest improvement over last year. That means this is the same core game that was released in 2005, tweaked in 2006, made shiny in 2007 and now pushed upon us again in 2008. I wonder if they have finally updated the uniforms for traded players, or is David Aebischer still in his Avalanche gear?

EA: yeah, but… but, we have the AHL! we did stuff to the dynasty mode! weekly goals! fantasy draft! contract negotiation feedback!

Ok, I’ll admit the AHL is kinda cool, but I can’t really see myself playing a season as the Hamilton Bulldogs or Ak-Sar-Ben Knights just so I can play with soon-to-be NHL players.

Dynasty mode needs some work to make it more realistic. It doesn’t need weekly goal bonuses to make your team better even quicker. It needs injuries with reasonable recovery times, player salary expectations more in line with a salary cap system, and an actual challenge once in a while (losing once in an 82 game season is not challenging).

I like the salary cap in the game, but I hate that because my players lead the league in every category (becasue the game is too damn easy) that when it comes time to negotiate contracts they want Thomas Vanek-like raises across the board. It almost feels like they left the salary demands part of the equation alone and just slapped a cap in so it would be impossible to resign anybody when their contract is up.

hmm… that might not be so far off real life after all.

I understand that making a game for the infinite PC hardware configurations out there is difficult, and that the goal (obviously) is to sell as many games as possible so you don’t want to alienate people by making the hardare requirements ridiculous… but don’t think that you can repackage NHL 05 yet again with minor “improvements” and call it a new game.

How they could go from winning best sports sim in 2001 to the crap they have pushed out since is a mystery to me.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Alan, Games, PC Games.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.