After recently trying my hand at a rather overlooked sport in the UK and found a gem in 2K Sports’ NBA 2K6 I was pleased to hit the ice with their other yearly offering, NHL 2K6, this time back in next-gen glory.
Now I’m going to admit that I’m not the most avid follower of ice hockey, not even close as the extent of my knowledge extends to knowing of the existence of Wayne Gretsky (who released an NHL game for the Megadrive) and that in ice hockey pretty much anything goes, particularly fighting! Luckily you don’t need to understand the rules of hockey all that well and you’ll pick up the essentials of hockey as quickly as the controls, which are intuitive and very responsive.
In addition to the “normal” controls crammed onto every button on the pad, 2K Sports have also stuck in a few extra options, some to make the game a bit easier and some just to have a bit of fun with! One of the little bonuses is called “Crease control”, which you can activate by clicking in the right analogue stick while you’re defending. It’s essentially first/close 3rd-person control of the goalie with visual aids to help you block oncoming shots. It’s pretty useful as the computer has trouble blocking some types of shot but clicking in and out of the mode is a bit awkward, so I didn’t use it all that often.
The other mode is for the offence part of the game. By clicking the stick when on the attack little button icons appear above all your players. By pressing a certain button you can pass to a specific player quickly, or between lots of players quickly, which is a great way to fool the opposing goalie. The only problem comes when you want to shoot and you’ve got to click the stick back in and then line up the shot, which sometimes doesn’t work all that well…
The atmosphere is absolutely brilliant and NHL 2K6 is undoubtedly the most immersive sports sim I’ve played, even over the hallowed PES series. The graphics are top-notch, with a semi-reflective ice rink that has that “just about to melt” look about it and shows the scars in real-time as players carve up the ice. The players look and move with lifelike fluidity and grace, showing the 360’s potential much better than many recent titles. The only problem is with some of the cut-scenes, particularly of the crowds, as the people seem to glitch about into each other and although it tarnishes the sheen a little bit it’s not that big a deal.
The graphics are surpassed only by the sound, which is also top-notch; the slaps of hockey sticks echo round the rink, with dull thuds as two players crash into each other. This is all accompanied by the dull murmur of the crowd, who cheer and applaud when someone slams into the wall, the home team’s on the breakaway or when someone scores. The great attention to detail is what makes games stand out and make it worth the purchase over last year’s version, and 2K6 games have been working hard to get your forty quid.
NHL 2K6 is a great game because it balances sim-like attention to detail for the die-hards and instant action fun for the average punter. It has the normal career/franchise modes, with create-a-player and all that jazz but also is just as fun taking on the computer in an exhibition scrap. The online mode looks pretty well thought-out but was pretty empty and when someone did turn up I tried to join them for about ten minutes and it kept crashing! The split-screen multiplayer is great fun though, blindly smashing your mates into the glass and laying down fisticuffs with them has never been more fun without the real pain! There’s also a wealth of little challenges and arcade minigames, which like the games available on the live marketplace fill a few minutes of boredom!
NHL 2K6 is the best ice-hockey game I’ve played to date and one of the most enjoyable sports game I’ve played since Smash Court Tennis and the Pro Evo series. Even if you don’t know much about ice hockey it doesn’t really matter, just get it, stop drooling and have a lot of fun skating around and starting the occasional fight!
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