NHL 2001 (PC)
Developed by: Electronic Arts
Published by: Electronic Arts
Everyone knows that Electronic Arts are pretty reliable when it comes to sports games. They’ve had plenty of experience developing them, so it’s no big surprise that NHL 2001 is a good hockey game. A very good hockey game. But when it comes to EA’s sports games, the only way you can truly judge them is to step back and compare each title with the ones that have come in previous years.
Myself, I find it hard to keep up with their annual releases. (As I’m writing this review, NHL 2002 is probably going to be out in just a couple of months.) Over the last few years in particular, the games don’t seem to have changed much. Sure the rosters have been updated, and the graphics look a little sharper or whatever, but there’s just nothing groundbreaking about them. And I guess you can’t really blame EA, because hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
However, I am happy to say, NHL 2001 is the first NHL release in a long time to really truly blow me away.
Part of the reason for this is because this is the first EA sports game I have had the pleasure of playing on my PC. In the past I had found that being a PC gamer is often more trouble than it’s worth. You have the potential for much better graphics, but only if your computer is up to par with the game industry standards (mine is usually far from it). Well it turns out that this year I finally had a new computer with ample processing power, thus making it possible for me to indulge in NHL 2001. And let me just say, it is a real “hoot”, if you will.
Graphically, this game is amazing. For the first time, I can actually recognize a particular player just by seeing his face, rather than by the number on his sweater.
They have further enhanced the illusion of watching hockey on TV by showing little cut scenes in between plays of the players skating to the bench, trash talking or shaking their heads at the ref. The players’ movements and facial expressions are uncanny in their realism, and the variety of cut scenes keeps the game from feeling repetitive. (If you’re impatient, you can always skip these animations anyways.)
The only thing that keeps me from thinking this is an actual live game on TV is the rather lifeless look in the eyes of the players. (I guess they’re saving that fix for NHL 2002…)
The game options are virtually unlimited this time around. You can almost get lost in the maze of menus and screens that allow you to configure the game. To say that the game is “highly customizable” would be a severe understatement. Game Speed? Speed Burst Length? Puck Friction?! Puck elasticity?!!! It’s all here baby.
In order to fully enjoy the game, you’ll want to use a good controller with at least 6 or 7 different buttons. There are probably over 12 different actions that you can assign to a button, so with only a 4 button controller you will be getting by with just the bare essentials.
If you want to use the keyboard, you won’t have a problem finding enough keys, but I think that it will probably be rather clumsy to use. Unless you’re big into using keyboards for gaming. Whatever.
The on-line gameplay is pretty impressive too. I had my doubts, but it proved to be fairly smooth and free of lag. I don’t think it would be playable if you don’t have a cable, DSL or other broadband internet connection though. Of course, you could always play over a local network as well.
EA always does a good job of making the game accessible to both the casual player and the hardcore hockey geek. There is a “Quick Start” menu option that will let you basically choose your teams and hit the ice.
However, if you are the kind of person that really gets into these games, then you’ll love NHL 2001. Especially on the PC.
One of the advantages of playing this game on the PC is that EA releases regular roster updates so that you don’t have to wait for next year’s version of the game to get the results of the latest wheeling and dealing. This is something that we may start to see with console games as well, once they get internet connectivity fully integrated with them.
One disappointing thing about these roster updates is that any players who were not included in the game when it was first released (such as Mario Lemieux) will not get customized faces. Instead, they will have to use one of the generic faces that are built into the game.
My favourite new geek feature in NHL 2001 is the Face Import utility. A lot of people seem to complain that this is useless, but I guess it just depends on your point of view. If you are satisfied just playing by the book, pitting your favourite NHL team against your least favourite NHL team, then the Face Import utility will provide little amusement for you. But if you enjoy seeing digital versions of your friends and other strange celebrities scrapping each other, then this might be a dream come true.
Basically, this feature allows you to scan in a photograph of someone and map it onto a player’s face. Mapping the player’s face involves outlining the head, eyes, nose and mouth, and it is pretty easy to do. While the results are not always the most convincing, at the very least you will have a good time turning your friends into lopsided and disproportionate freaks.
You can also create a custom team, complete with its own unique logo, team name, and a roster that can combine all your favourite NHL players with your custom made players. You can then use the custom teams when playing exhibition games (including on-line play!). The unfortunate thing is that you can’t play a season with these custom teams. Oh well.
You can even import MP3s for in-game music and choose your own taunt sound clips. Tell me, what’s better than scoring a game winner in overtime against your friend and then bugging the hell out of him by repeating an Arnold Schwarzenegger quote over and over? Nothing, that’s what, nothing.
Of course, as with any NHL game, 2001 has a few minor annoyances to it.
The main complaint I have with the game is this new concept of “momentum”. I’m sure you’re familiar with how momentum can work in sports. If one team gets on a roll, and scores a series of goals, then they may gain confidence while the other team in turn loses morale. This makes the team that is on a roll more likely to score again. I’m not sure if this has actually been used in any of EA’s previous NHL games, but I don’t really like the way it works in this one.
The worst part is, you can’t turn this feature off.
From my experience playing NHL 2001, momentum seems to have a huge impact on the outcome of the game. Especially when you’re playing against the computer. If you’re playing the computer, you better hope they don’t score, because once they score, they will usually follow it up immediately with a flurry of goals that will leave your head spinning. It’s like, if they score on you, you might as well just forfeit the game.
In fact, it completely changes your game strategy as well, because you start to pay more attention to the momentum meter than anything else. If your opponent gets a goal, you’ll just be trying to dump a shot on net as soon as possible in order to diffuse their momentum and bring the game back to even ground.
Whether or not it is an accurate simulation of hockey remains to be seen, but the bottom line is, I didn’t find it to be a lot of fun. In order to keep the game competitive, you want to feel like anything can happen. Even if you’re down by 5 goals, you should at least have a chance to come back from that deficit.
In the end, I suppose it adds a fresh challenge to the game, but if you’re going to add such a radical new dimension to the gameplay, you really should at least give players the option to turn it off, or control the extent to which it affects the game. Then again, I guess if they did that, people wouldn’t have much reason to play any of EA’s older NHL games, or to buy any future ones either.
It’s also a lot harder to score in NHL 2001 than it used to be. In past NHL games, there were usually various deke maneuvres that would virtually guarantee you a goal. Now some people might say that it’s “cheap” to be able to use the same move time and again to score goals. But if someone is so predictable that they always use the same move all the time, they should be easy to beat. And you always have the option to control your goaltender manually too.
In a way this is good because it forces people to find new ways to score. On the other hand, it makes for a lot of low scoring games, and less realistic gameplay.
At the very least, in the previous games, there was a good chance you could score if you were on a breakaway. In NHL 2001, deking seems to have very little effect. The most effective way of scoring seems to be skating up to the blue line and letting a floater go. You have to understand how annoying it is to have someone take the lead with less than a minute left from one of these cheesy floaters. It’s a travesty to the game, it really is.
Another small beef I have is that when a penalty is over, a window appears in the top right corner of the screen to show the player coming out of the box. The window temporarily blocks your view of that part of the ice, which can make for some rather frustrating moments. This is one place where EA got a little too carried away with the TV simulation when they should have placed more importance on the actual gameplay.
Lastly, I should note that although my version of NHL 2001 was fairly stable, for some reason it seemed to crash quite often in the middle of creating a new player. Of course, this only happened after I applied the latest patches from EA, so maybe the secret is to avoid those pesky patches altogether. (Again, remember that EA motto: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.) Either way, I doubt you’ll notice this problem much, since I seem to be the only person I know who actually uses this player creation tool anyways.
Hmmm.. well I guess this has been a pretty exhaustive review of the game. It’s highly recommended for any serious hockey heads, and if you’re wondering how it stacks up with the games from previous years, well, there are more than enough cool new features to make it worth the investment. If it wasn’t for that damn momentum meter, this game could have been perfect. It’s just a good thing I’m not as temperamental as I used to be, because I’d probably have smashed more than a few controllers by now.– Sean