NHL 09

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• Defensive Skill Stick - NHL 08 gave you true offensive prowess with the Skill Stick, and this year, you have the power to stop it. Block passing lanes with 360 control of your stick or kill an opponent's one timer game by lifting their stick just before they receive a pass
• Be A Pro - A dynamic 3rd person camera puts you in the role of one player on a team. The Performance Tracker will rate your play in over 50 categories, to make sure you know what parts of your game need to improve. Start your career off in the ranks of the AHL and become one of the best in the NHL. Your very own hockey card will mark your progress, from your rookie beginnings to a potentially legendary ending
• Create-A-Play Breakouts - create a winning strategy in both online and offline play. Make breakout plays from your own zone or set up behind your net and tell your right winger to look for the flip dump from the defenseman
• NHL 94 Controls - Hit, pass, shoot, and score using the simplified two-button control system featured in NHL 94. So even if you're new to the game, you can challenge the best of the best
• One-handed Dekes - When you are skating in on a breakaway, tap the puck to one hand and tuck the puck behind a sprawling goalie for the ultimate finish

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0019C4MTS
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches ; 6.1 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: November 4, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,970 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #73 in Sports & Outdoors > Fan Shop > Video Games & Accessories

Product Description

Platform: PlayStation2

PENDING

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid hockey for the Ps2 this year which includes all the fun and frustration of the real NHL, November 19, 2008

By 

Burr "Agnostic Centrist" (Ithaca, MI) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NHL 09 (Video Game)

This year's EA hockey game for the Ps2 delivers some great hockey action despite predictably lacking a few of the features present in the next-gen versions. The top-notch presentation and high profile soundtrack make for an intense and generally satisfying hockey experience, despite a few irritating gameplay flaws.

PROS
-Great presentation with sharp visuals, terrific sound effects and a soundtrack with some surprisingly good songs. Animations are excellent and varied and collision detection is pretty good with players bouncing and tumbling after driving the net and stumbling and staggering after player and puck contact.
-Great controls. Playing defense is fun with the 360 degree poke feature, effective and well-animated hooks and tie ups, and convincing body checks. The manual deke puck control and right stick shooting takes some getting used to, but is generally solid and feels right.
-Overall, the puck physics are quite believable.

CONS
-Sporadic scoring sucks a lot of the fun out of this game. Sometimes it feels like NHL 09 decides before the game (or period) whether or not everything will go in, or if the goalies will be omnipotent. Generally goalies vary from god-like (the CPU most of the time) to incompetent (more often than not, your goalie... especially with rebounds and bad angles by comparison). When the CPU decides it is time to score on you, everything will work against you... especially your netminder, as your goalie will give up the fluke goals much more often than the CPU. Expect to out-shoot the computer by 150% but have around the same amount of goals, or none at all. If you are frustrated easily, the goals (or lack thereof) in this game will make you pull your hair out because an amazing deke or one-time play will likely have the same odds of finding the back of the net as a fluttering wrist shot from just inside the blue line.
-There is, however, one exception to this goalie (and scoring) inconsistency, meaning that there is one consistent theme... goaltenders, more often than not, bite very hard on fake shots (as do defenders... you can lay out half their team as they scramble to block it). You can score quite often by faking a shot and dekeing or shooting to the open side (forehand is very effective) or dishing it for a one-timer as the goalie will react to the fake by going into a butterfly save and freezing for a moment, leaving a gaping net. If you can get any amount of space in the offensive zone and see no shame in exploiting this tactic then you will score a lot of goals.
-Teammate AI can be pretty idiotic, unfortunately. Your teammates enjoy frequently skating right in front of you or standing in your way like statues when you try to carry or shoot the puck. They also do not always grasp the concept of using the boards to cycle the puck nor are they generally all that good at gathering loose pucks or positioning themselves offensively. They also tend to take stupid penalties by randomly checking people.
-Not all the animations are great... in particular skating backwards with the puck, which not only looks very awkward but generally does not work well at all. The goalie animations are rather poor, as well.
-An occasional bug I noticed is that sometimes the game seems to forget you have had a penalty called on you. You will be shorthanded, but there will be no penalty clock and you can still take icing calls until the powerplay ends.
-The package itself is dull and unattractive. Opening the box to get your game disc you are greeted with a black and white booklet. Also, many of the team ratings are inaccurate and biased.

Overall, the game is solid. It manages to mesh arcade and simulation rather well, although in doing so leads to some frustration with goalie inconsistency. Though there is no online play, if you have always enjoyed EA's fast-paced hockey games, you will likely enjoy this one. If you can get over the often times omnipotent, other times incompetent goaltenders, annoying teammate AI, and some fluky goals, you will probably come to appreciate the otherwise first-rate presentation, detailed and varied animations, mostly commendable collision detection, and fleshed out gameplay features of NHL 09.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars They just don't get it, December 14, 2008

By 

Gwilym - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NHL 09 (Video Game)

This is a fun game in many ways, but with some very frustrating drawback. EA Sports has been producing this game for 17 years now and they have received the same criticism for all those years - still they seem unable to do anything about it.

Here goes:
1. As in every other NHL-game in this series, the AI is very bad. Even if you play at the most advanced level, you will very soon dominate the game completely.
2. The goaltenders are just as pathetic as ever. To compensate for not being able to create a decent AI that could make the game challenging, EA Sports insteade made the CPU goaltender almost impossible to score against while your own goalie will drop in almost every puck.

The consequence of these two drawbacks are simple. You'll dominate each and every game completely, but you'll still loose. Be prepared for you shooting 70 shots and scoring 1 goal while the CPU will shoot 3 shots and score 2 goals. The result is that the games in NHL09 don't resemble real hockey games.

All in all, this is a fun game if you play agains friend (and these days it's the only thing I use it to do) but totally useless if you want to play against the computer as EA Sports hasn't been able to develop an AI that would produce realistic games despite 17 years of experience. It would be time for them to stop putting out almost the same game year after year and start focusing on getting the game to work instead.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great PS2 Game, December 5, 2009

By 

David Corey Baker (California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: NHL 09 (Video Game)

I'm still a fan of the PS2. Games are on the cheap since the PS3 has come out. NHL 09 has fun lasting gameplay. The graphics are detailed and controls are just plain simple. Enjoy!!!

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