NHL 07

Let's have a minute of silence for the sad loss of Anaheim Mighty Ducks... Who could have thought that those boys can lose a game so easily!? 5-4 is one of those scores, you lead, you get relaxed and you lose! It makes you weep and throw the hockey stick away, perhaps even choose a different team to support. Vancouver Canucks might be a good choice as they really rock at home in the 2007 season. This agitation can really damage one's heart so it's better to leave grudges aside and start playing the console version of one of the most popular US sports. Name one sport where you can hit people with sticks in the face. Yes, you've got it, it's hockey and baseball doesn't count since you can't hit people with a bat when you're a mile away from them.

Concept I'm going to mention this right from the start: NHL 07 is the 2006 version with changed rosters and a few gameplay improvements. Yes, the graphics look a little better, but only a little and EA Sports are afraid to take those big leaps on the older consoles saving themselves for the next-gen titles. You might be wondering what's up with the title of this review and the answer comes from EA Sport's biggest innovation in the hockey sims so far: the skill stick. One might think that something named "skill stick" is some sort of a new joystick that resembles a hockey stick. Wrong! It's the good old analog stick, specially the right one that has been assigned with many new functions that will surely easy the gameplay.

Move it up and you'll do a wrist shot, while moving the right analog stick down and then up will make you do a slap shot. Other rotation angles of the almighty analog stick will grant you cool dekes and changes of the shot directions. Don't know what a deke is?! For starters, the whole Mighty Ducks thing must have been a mystery for you, if you don't know that the Canadian term "deke" refers to the techniques used by the hockey players to get past their opponents. It's short for "decoy" and it reminds me of the football dribbles. You just push the puck forward and catch it again after you've left the opponent behind.

Leaving the theory aside, you start your copy of NHL 07 just to be welcomed by a classic EA Sports cutscene filled with all sorts of tricks and speed moves performed by the best hockey players in the NHL or the Czech Hockey League. Having skipped or watched it, you'll get to see the icy blue menus and listen to some punkish songs. The whole game menu is accompanied by a pretty punk-rock soundtrack featuring some of the artists that might have sung at least once at the Stanley Cup final. Choose the Play Now mode for a quick game of hockey with a friend of yours in two-player mode, or just checking out the ice in single-player mode.

There's also the Dynasty Mode, the Exhibition, the Season, the EA Sports World Tournament, the EA Sports Free for All and the Shoot Out Mini Game. The shoot out is pretty fun and it will let you choose a player, the game type (score drive or shots drive) and the ending score (3, 5 or 10 goals). You can add a big head option just for kicks. The game is a crystal clear version of NHL 06 that's suffered a few minor modifications. You can notice that all the teams are updated and that the NHL is crawling with European stars that got transferred across the ocean in the search of fame and....bone-crushing experience. Still, no one can beat the Canadians...

Check out the rosters from the menu or select the roster management option to make a couple of modifications yourself if you want to be up to speed with the winter transfers. For the PC version it's pretty basic, you get those updates and patches that grant you a 100% real life rosters, but for the PS2, you'll just have to do with manual editing. There's a creation zone too, where the ultra-used EA Sports customization process begins. You might want to create a player, that has not agent, input his name, nickname, birthday, origin and team position. Those are not even the superficial tweaks yet, as you'll also be able to adjust the man's height, weight, the size of his jaw, add scars to his face or give him a black eye...or two. Once you've created a Rocky Balboa-look-alike that weighs 150 kilos and has the goalkeeper position established till his first heart-attack you might want to check out the game's rules from the "Rules and Options" menu. A true hockey fan can participate in the World Cup tournament with his favorite national team or take a plunge into the deep Dynasty mode.

You'll have the chance to relive the glorious days of your favorite NHL team or maybe you'll select a team from the Czech League and take them through a dozen seasons. Be their coach or manager and change prices for the tickets, change the players' salary, hire scouts or medics, in one word: control everything! (that's two words actually). Chemistry will be essential if you're planning on staying on top of your league for a long time. As time goes by, players get to know each other and they'll start acting like a team after two or three matches together. You'll have to take care of the players' health, the public relations section, the coaching and you'll be receiving update e-mails all the time. They hold the vital information for a hockey Mourinho like you. It will be info about injuries, transfer lists or new prices for the upcoming Stanley Cup game.

Gameplay I mentioned earlier the greatest innovation in NHL 07, but the gameplay is pretty familiar otherwise, especially to those who have played the previous NHL games. As usual, it's pretty difficult to see the puck when the action speeds up a bit and the teams are playing a fast-paced game. It puzzles me that the main goal of the hockey game, the magical puck has an aura around it, like it was under a spell. Graphical bug or just a way to notice the black thingie easier? The player indicators aren't that much of an invention as they don't quite show if you've got the puck or not, since they remain lit even if you've lost possession. The thing that bothered me the most about NHL 07's gameplay was the lag in the player changing process. I assigned different buttons to the gameplay functions, because of the prolonged Pro Evolution Soccer or FIFA sessions that changed my button-pressing patterns.

As I was pressing the player changing button, I noticed that lag and it happens mostly in the multiplayer game, being a great disadvantage in the offensive section of a team. If you become angry, you know who's to blame and to beat: the opponent team's players. The punching minigames haven't left the NHL series and as long as they're here, we can still play the game and pull out the violent inner self every once in a while. Since people are throwing punches around on the ice and doing body-checks when the puck's not even in sight, some rules could really be helpful. You can toy around with a set of official NHL rules, international or, surprise, surprise, no rules at all. That means free violence for all and the game will soon turn into a goalie bashing experience. All those helmets and protective gear are there with a specific purpose and they're life savers. If you want to feel that you're playing a simulator and you stick to the rules the game can become really frustrating when it's stopped every two seconds by the referee.

Offsides, fouls, icings, penalties, high-sticking and who knows what other rules can really fragment a game making it almost impossible to play, especially in the multiplayer mode. If you've read a thing or two about hockey rules or watched many NHL matches, there will be no problem concerning those rules. It can, however become frustrating when your goalie is keeping the puck for too much time and you don't even know who has "the ball". You can set up a winning strategy and play in an offensive manner or choose to wait and strike on the counters, it's all up to you. You'll feel the high chemistry of the teams that played together for a long time or the hesitations of the newly arrived players. Missed passes, mistakes, great opportunities, it's all part of the game. In previous NHL games, once you got the puck and you accelerated, it was over, as that meant a sure goal.

Now you'll miss more, hit the bar, face better AI goalies and use that brilliant strategy that has a player skating behind his own net. He will be doing that to lure the attackers into his zone and speed in the opposing direction to take the other team by surprise. The gamer will be doing dekes and he'll speed to the goalie in an attempt to surprise him with a wrist shot. Nothing compares to the moment when the red light is lit behind the opposing team's net. That's the signal of a scored goal for those of you that don't know the basic things about hockey.

There was a second when I felt spine chills while playing NHL 07; it might sound like I'm bragging, but really I didn't know that this was possible. Well, I scored a goal having hit the puck from the area around my net! The other team was attacking as hard as they could leaving their goalie open and waiting and all I did was hit the puck with one of my defenders. It flew gently within a curved trajectory and landed in the net... Pure miracle, I tell you! With this NHL title, one thing is for sure, it has plenty of feeling and it will keep you entertained in these long winter days.

Video FIFA and NBA had horrible crowds and I'm talking about graphics here, but this shouldn't surprise a gamer who's played some of the EA Sports titles. Surprisingly, NHL 07 manages to overcome the visual handicap and delivers fanatic people cheering for their favorite teams and doing the dances that get the boys in gear. You'll see glasses breaking when you've just done a brutal body check. Also, a monster hit on the puck will make glasses break and you'll get a well-deserved penalty for that. Famous players look like their real counterparts, well at least their faces do, since they've covered in mountains of carbon fiber, steel and plastic.

Puck physics is something that you'll surely appreciate when the round troublesome object starts slipping around hitting walls, breaking glasses and hurting innocent bystanders. The players move naturally and they skate in a pretty realistic manner, without gliding like they weighted two grams. There will even be skating marks on the ice that will disappear a few seconds after you'll have passed by. You can slip, fall on the cold floor, collect injuries and create some of the most brutal fouls around. The fights look the same way they did in the previous NHL titles and since we've come to that, we might as well say that NHL 07 is the 2006 title from a graphical point of view. EA Sports have kept most of the visual aspects unchanged and that can be a good thing for the older fans or a bad thing for those that want more out of a new game.

Sound You should feel right at home if you've listened to the rocking tunes that EA provided in games like FIFA or Need for Speed. Anti Flag, NOFX or Quiet Drive are the best examples of the punk-rock music you'll be listening to while you're browsing the menus, or even in the game, specially in the breaks. The crowd is superb and those tunes that precede a penalty or a power play will make feel like you've bought the best ticket for a cup final. You'll hear men breathing hard after a long skating sequence and the sound of bones being crushed when you perform a body check. Also, for those of you that know how to miss, you'll hear the goalie's bar being hit plenty of times. It will be a neat metallic sound that goes perfectly with the sound of the breaking glass when you'll have hit the puck a tad harder. The referee will be whistling a lot especially if you have the NHL rules on, otherwise the crowd takes over and if you score enough, they'll be delirious. Also you'll feel the ice underneath your legs thanks to the sounds it will make when skated on.

Multiplayer NHL 07 can be played online too, but the real fun comes when you connect 2 or 4 joysticks and start skating and head-bashing for victory. The online options are pretty basic and predictable: head-to-head matches, a lobby or leaderboards. You won't see any tournament or season mode in the Xbox and PS2 versions and that's sad considering that the PC version has them all. The only thing we could be happy about is the lack of the famous lag that killed many other online games of pertaining to the sports sim genre. Again, while playing a two-player game, you'll feel a bit confused by those colored shadows that indicate if a player was selected. It's not that clear if you control that player or not and the lag appears like in the single-player mode when you try to switch to another man.

Conclusion This is a great NHL 06 game, but a pretty average NHL 07 title. EA Sports seems to be running out of ideas, as these things happen to most of the 2006-2007 titles and we don't want to feel like we're playing the patched version of the previous installment in the series. The only major improvements are the skill stick system, the graphics a bit and the rosters (inclusion of Czech leagues). Otherwise, NHL 07 doesn't manage to surprise a gamer who's played at least two more hockey titles produced by EA Sports.