NHL 2K6 (PC)
Developed by: Kush Games
Published by: Sega/Take 2 Interactive

After a whole year of bickering, arrogant posturing and lost profits, the NHL players and owners have finally settled their differences and agreed to get back to business. The upside to last year’s lockout is the fact that the upcoming hockey season may be wild and unpredictable with many team personnel changes and new rules to shake things up. However, if you thought that this year’s crop of hockey video games would also be fresh and exciting as a result, you might be a little disappointed.

Once again, the two major titles come from EA and Sega, each very similar but with philosophically different approaches to the game. After Sega’s NHL 2K5 put a major dent in EA’s sales last year, EA has fought back by landing exclusive access to the ESPN brand, chopping their own retail price, and attempting to reclaim the gameplay from their NHL 94 glory days. Sega and Kush Games, on the other hand, have quietly stuck to their guns and avoided any drastic changes. As a result these two hockey games are pretty evenly matched this year, and your preference is going to depend a lot on your style of play – arcade vs sim.

NHL 2K6 is, as usual, the more realistic game of the two, and manages to feel a lot more like hockey should. But that doesn’t mean it’s overly complex and has a high-learning curve either. The controls are smooth and fluid, like you are actually skating on ice, and I’m glad to see that they decided to eliminate the multiple control schemes for Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced this year. The ability to skate backwards with the puck while on offense is a neat addition, and the new goalie controls are fun even if it’s difficult to find an adequate camera angle for such a thing.

“Pro Control mode” is one of the main new features that the developers have been touting, and while it was a good idea in theory, I didn’t find it all that practical. When you click the right thumbstick it associates a button with each of your teammates for precision passing… kind of like you might see in a football game. While it does avoid the problem of passing to someone you didn’t intend to (which does occur occasionally using the regular controls), it’s difficult to toggle out of Pro Control mode once your pass has connected. If it had been activated only when holding a button down instead it might have worked better.

The only other obvious gameplay change is the new Enforcer system, which allows the tough guys on each team to reduce the effectiveness of opponents through physical intimidation. The system comes off as being a little gimmicky though, and with fights being so rare in 2K6 it doesn’t really add any realism anyways. The Party Mode mini-games are back, and these are definitely a unique and welcome feature in my book.

There have been definite improvements in the visuals since 2K5 too. The face models look much more recognizable and there are a lot more realistic animations, especially for the goalies. EA still has a huge lead in terms of presentation though; they even added real coach likenesses this year. As far as I can tell, 2K is still basically using the same game engine they’ve had since the Dreamcast days and it’s probably about time for an overhaul. Some small but cool things that Kush Games did come up with this year are auto-generated highlight reels at the end of each period (X-Box only) and a lot more crowd cut scenes. Fellow Southern Ontario hockey fans will also be comforted by the fact that Bob Cole and Harry Neale are doing the Play By Play commentary.

The biggest problem with NHL 2K6, as it seems to be every year, is the horribly inadequate user interface. It seems like there’s a million different save files (profile, franchise, season, etc.) and most of the time the game won’t save them for you automatically. Why should you have to remember to go to the Options menu and choose Save everytime you’re done playing a season game? Why does the X-Box Live menu have to be so confusing? Why are there different roster updates for online and offline play? It all just feels clunky and unpolished. Speaking of unpolished, you are also likely to encounter at least a few bugs if you play the game for any length of time. Specifically, there have been a lot of complaints on their forums about crashes when saving progress in Franchise mode. While I haven’t experienced any major problems myself, that is most certainly not good for business.

Despite these issues, NHL 2K6 is still my personal hockey game of choice for the third of fourth year in a row. It just feels right; the A.I. moves in such a way that you can set up plays and strategize properly, and you can score realistic goals in a huge variety of situations. I was initially a little disappointed that there are no real noteworthy improvements or additions this year, but now I realize that it’s all the small things that make the difference. To be fair, from what I’ve seen EA have done a decent job this year as well, but I still recommend that true hockey fans give Sega’s lesser known title a chance first. — Sean

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