A hockey simulaor

Reviewed by jbone4318 on September 15, 2006  |  report this review

EA definitley changed the classic hockey. No more button pushing, everything (except pass) is done with the left and right analog stick. Moving the right stick around you can deke, toe drag, shoot, fake shoot and spin. It flows smoothely too. It does take a while to get use to. I still am not used to it. There is no turbo button, it is more of a hockey simulator than arcade game. The graphics are great. Now, things I dont like about the game. #1 There is alot of lag onlne. EA needs to put out a patch over live. There is no Live opponent like in madden. Live opponent is when you are playing a season, you can see if anyone online will play your opponent. Also, no online seasons. Season play is kind of bare. Also it is missing some cinema scenes and crowd involement. I can not compare this game game to 2k7. I have only played the demo. Overall this is a good game. I like the changed

Very Well Done

Reviewed by kylehenning on September 22, 2006  |  report this review

EA did a great job on this year's NHL game. They revamped the controls to create a very fluid gameplay experience. It takes a bit to get used to it but it's worth it. The Dynasty mode is more in-depth and online play is great. Hopefully once the season starts EA will update the rosters to make them a bit more accurate. Change is good.

The Best Hockey Game on the Market Today

Reviewed by DarkneZZ on January 05, 2007  |  report this review

EA has truly revamped the NHL game franchise for the XBOX 360 console. This game is revolutionary with its next-gen graphics and new control scheme. This NHL game is more fun to play than the ones in the past because you truly get a sense that you are actually on the ice and how fast the game is played.

The graphics are the best that I have ever seen for a NHL game to date. However, the same can't be said about its PC counterpart, which is basically NHL 06 repackaged with updated rosters and a salary cap nor NHL 2K7, which doesn't look next-gen at all and features less than impressive graphics. The detail level is extraordinary. EA really focused on player models. Most of the players in the game are a splitting image of real life NHL players. Likewise, the goalies are extremely realistic (you can see there pads move when they go into a butterfly). You can even pause the game and zoom in on a puck and it will show the home team's logo and name plus the NHL wording on the puck.

The controls are a lot more fluid than in previous NHL games. You move the player with the left analog stick. The right analog stick is used to shoot the puck and also to deke, do spin moves, fake out other players, and etc. In fact, the face buttons are only used to change playing styles and to start a fight. EA, also, offers the option to revert back to the classic game controls with the face buttons, but in time, you will realize that this new control scheme is a lot better than the former one. This will take some time getting used to though. NHL 07's controls are a lot better than NHL 2K7's traditional face button controls. In NHL 2K7, there's even a new control option, called pressure control, where you can tell a teammate to put pressure on an opposing player. However, this seems to almost make interference legal.

There are vast improvements to the gameplay. Some of the more noticeable ones are: 1. The goalie's mask and pads now change corresponding, depending on the team the goalie in on and for trades. 2. The goalie now has to cover the puck up in order to stop the game. In past NHL games, the puck would, at times, be magnetically sucked into the goalie's glove. 3. The goalie AI is a lot better now too. Even on easy you can't score a ridiculous amount of goals. In NHL 06, I was able to score at least 20 goals every time on easy.

I really like the songs in NHL 07. However, there aren't enough of them and they get boring quickly if you play the game too much. The commentary, this time around, is actually all new

Although the game features top notch graphics and a better control scheme, it still has a few flaws, barring it from perfect. 1. The game feels somewhat like a bare bones package due to the modes, which aren't a lot. There's only a dynasty mode (I do like the new dynasty mode with the new graphics and salary cap rules.), shootout, world tournament, and online mode. NHL 2K7 does a way better job than NHL 07 in signing players. In NHL 2K7, you can

I will trade this game

Reviewed by Jasonh2n on October 13, 2007  |  report this review

FIND ME!

NHL 07 Review

I WANT THIS GAME MESSAGE ME..
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Is there anything right analog sticks can't do? Especially in the realm of sports games, the right stick has become the jack-of-all-trades in recent years, with developers finding all sorts of clever ways to make it emulate moves, passes, shots, hits, and the like. The reason behind this has always been to try to give the player more freedom of control over what they're doing, rather than relying on canned animations via button presses. Never has this freedom been more apparent than in NHL 07 for the Xbox 360. In a near-complete revamp of the series' control scheme, the 360 controller's right stick is now effectively your hockey stick, letting you perform dekes and shots with simple flicks and movements of it. It's a fantastic system that will force longtime hockey fans to rethink how they play the game of hockey--though, unfortunately, it also happens to be just about the only truly cool, brand-new thing in the series' debut on the Xbox 360. Much as EA did with Madden NFL 06 last year, NHL 07's features set has been stripped to the bone, not only offering nothing new, but removing several secondary features and leaving you with nothing but a functional franchise mode and online play. In effect, NHL 07 takes one giant leap forward and a few hops back.

Say hello to the skill stick, AKA one of the coolest concepts to come along in hockey gaming.
So what's the deal with that stick then, eh? The deal is that on the game's default control scheme, you won't use face buttons at all. Passing is mapped to the right trigger and the right bumper; you skate and aim with the left control stick; and the right stick does just about everything else on offense. You press the stick forward to take a quick wrister, wind it back to line up for a powerful slapshot, and move it side to side to deke out defenders and goalies. Those are the basics, but there's more to the stick than that. The key here is that there's very little limit to what you can do with the stick--but you'll have to work for your goals. One-timers are not easy to set up with this control scheme, and if you want to pull one off, you'll need a seriously ideal passing lane and precision timing to do it, just like in real hockey. But when you do, it's immensely satisfying. Heck, just about every goal you fire off in NHL 07 is a satisfying one, because you really feel like you're the one who made it happen. Those dekes you used to fake the goalie out of position and the aim of that wrist shot were all your doing, not just some series of preset animations that happened to do the work for you, and that's a beautiful thing.