It's that time of year again, when NHL nerds get all excited- joining their pools, buying their fantasy draft magazines and beginning to once again live vicariously through polygonal facsimiles of their hockey-night heroes. I'm certainly of the latter variety and take great pride participating as a volunteer organizer to the Total Action Hockey community. The community is dedicated to mature simulation sports entertainment, offering full team management, with full stats tracking, newswire, podcasts, highlights and more.

(If you're interested in joining a league for any video-hockey game/platform:
hop on over to http://www.totalactionhockey.com).

One of the big questions in the community this year is which NHL game to play, and on what platform? I'm here to say that despite some deficiencies, this year's PS3 version of NHL 2k8 is a definite upgrade over years past. I have been hard on 2k sports over the years. They have disappointed me to no end but I have an admission to make. It appears that Kush games has made a quantum leap- making right, what once went wrong. I really wish I could say they have addressed some of my previous complaints, but we'll go over those a bit later.

This year, veteran players will notice something odd when they first play NHL 2k8. What once was a robust and enjoyable interface has now been gutted from the game and replaced with something that seems completely abstract at first. New players will simply find it uncomfortable, but veteran players will likely hate it, as I did. That is, until I took the time to go through the tutorials and learned them inside and out. Once I played the CPU a few times on Hall-of-Famer difficulty, something magical happened: I found that I could dance with the puck in a way I could never do with classic controls. The "Pro-stick" control easily blows EA's "Skill-stick" control implementation away in terms of realism and variety. See for yourself, why:

So what are these changes, exactly? The Pro-stick control allows for free range stick movement while skating in any direction. This changes the dynamics of poke-checking, defending while skating backwards and pass blocking completely for the better. Deke/Break-combos are activated based on player skills (unlike EA where Zdeno Chara can deke like Jaromir Jagr at the flick of a button) and these special moves or dekes are challenging to pull off. The Pro-stick control also allows for better offensive puck control, allowing players to cycle pucks faster. This is mainly due to well implemented one-touch passing and fakes with Pro-stick controls. I've never felt like I've had this much control over my players in a hockey game.

A previous negative aspect of 2k's hockey engine, was goaltending and defensive AI has always been a bit suspect. Not this year! Defensive AI holds the offensive zone better and pinches more realistically. AI controlled players do not get stuck out of place often, and scoring requires opponents to move the puck around in order to get a clean shot or pass through the slot. Goaltending AI has been improved dramatically, incorporating smooth new animations, and better selection of saves. I have played countless hours and have yet to see many questionable goals from funny bounces. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that cheap plays will score with no greater frequency than the real NHL. I can just see the frustration in online lobby-rats' eyes when I play them and their forty one-timer and s-moves attempts aren't nearly as effective as they once were.

If you've avoided playing NHL 2k8 online because of those types of lobby-rats you should consider joining a league. Or, for all you 'introvert-role-player-types', there's always Franchise mode- quite capable of delivering over 100 hours of game play. We expect 2k to deliver Franchise mode every year, but I don't think we thank them enough. Again in NHL 2k8, we are blessed with a deep franchise mode, giving you total control over every aspect of your team. Cap/Contract negotiation is well implemented (which was a concern) and easy to use and it appears the worst bugs have been worked out (or easily worked around by turning CPU trading off).

Most notably, Kush revamped all of the menus this year. Much like the 'Pro-stick' controls, menus are still a little frustrating, but many minor irritations have been addressed in terms of menu functionality. Sliders now seem to have a consistent grade and it is much faster to summon and change settings than in previous years. (Advanced players should note that some options are hidden by default and can only be addressed by un-hiding them with the triangle button). Also worth mentioning, it is also now possible to share settings with ease via the Internet! This is a huge boon to organized leagues and simulation players. Thanks Kush!

Speaking of the Internet, this leads me to discuss the fundamental flaws that remain in this game. These are infuriating and unacceptable flaws that no gamer should have to endure, and yet we are subjected to, year after year, by 2ksports:

I'm disappointed that 2ksports once again, has lowered the bar for itself and what used to be the best hockey simulation around. 2ksports is lucky that EA also stumbled with its online league management this year and would do well to work hard on that aspect for 2k9, for all platforms. At any rate, I'll attempt to put my biases aside and rate this game fairly for y'all...

Game Breakdown

Ingredients

Execution

Get the Xbox360 Version. Where the PS3 version shines, the Xbox360 version does as well. Where the PS3 version fails, the Xbox360 excels (mainly online support for leagues). Only a strong execution on some major details saved the score of this game from truly disappointing score. Be warned 2ksports, if you're even listening.