NHL 2005

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• Choose from 30 NHL teams, 39 teams from the Swedish, Finnish and German Elite Leagues, and 21 International teams
• Open Ice Control allows new offensive plays, like Give-and-Go's and breakaway passe
• Call for a defensive double team with the touch of a button
• The new skating engine captures the explosive speed and precision of offensive & defensive play
• Deeper Dyansty Mode for interactive GM/owner relationships, including a deep new E-mail system

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002ILSL0
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: September 22, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,163 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: Xbox

From the Manufacturer

Dominate the open ice with NHL 2005, the most authentic and complete experience for hockey fans around the world. Open Ice Control adds a new dimension of realism to the game play experience, allowing you to utilize the entire ice surface by simultaneously controlling players without the puck. Plus, with the new face-off play calling system, the World Cup of Hockey, and all-new EA SPORTS Free4All, you can light the lamp like never before. NHL 2005 is the hockey experience that is easy to play, but hard to master.

• EA SPORTS OPEN ICE CONTROL: Seamlessly switch between players with or without the puck -- call for passes, tell a teammate to shoot, set up a vicious one-timer, or call for a defensive double-team on the fly with the push of a button.
• TOTAL PLAYER AWARENESS: With more player awareness than ever before, make saucer passes just before the blueline, call in a second defender to break up a 2-on-1, or fire off wrist shots at the perfect angle on net.
• FACE-OFF PLAYBOOK: New play calling system allows you to choose offensive and defensive face-off strategies every time the whistle blows. Plan an attack in your opponent's zone or protect the net right before the puck drops.
• THE WORLD CUP OF HOCKEY: Take part in the excitement of this year's World Cup of Hockey event featuring teams from USA, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Russia, Czech Republic, and Slovakia playing in authentic European and North American venues.
• ALL-NEW SKATING ENGINE: Glide then use explosive speed to get to the open ice -- now you have more . A refined backwards skating system also allows for unprecedented defensive precision and control.
• EA SPORTS FREE4ALL: The intensity explodes off the ice with EA SPORTS Free4All -- one net, one goalie, and every man for himself. Up to four can play and the one who scores the most goals wins.
• NEW XBOX LIVE: For the first time ever, NHL 2005 goes Xbox LIVE. Featuring one-on-one and tournament games, online rankings, and buddy lists -- now you can light the lamp like never before.

Product Description

NHL 2005 delivers the incredible of a World Cup hockey game, combined with international leagues and competitions from two continents. It's top-quality gaming with all the speed, finesse, and hard-hitting action of the best in pro hockey. Lace up your skates and hit the ice! All-new AI recreates the play styles and personalities of the biggest names in the game Go online and compete with the best players from around the country

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Does not learn from last years mistakes, October 2, 2004

By 

David Spalinski - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NHL 2005 (Video Game)

Last years NHL 2004 was a major step backward for the usually good NHL series from EA sports. It included very poor control of player movement, a bad passing system, poor one-timers, difficult face-off system, lack of fully editable players in dynasty modes, bad menu flow, not enough tweakable controls to create your own experience, and worst of all was the over the top hitting/checking.
This years edition only improves on the problems with the menu flow (this years is actually quite good), however it seems the other issues have been neglected, or made even worse.

The most noticable and annoying element to game has to be the ridiculous checking and hitting. There is so much checking in this game that the rest of the gameplay should follow suite of games like NHL Hitz, but instead it mixes Hitz arcade style with simulation gameplay. This creates an extremely frustrating situation for trying to create plays with your teammates, and for getting ahead in the game (unless your playing on the easiest difficulty). There is so much hitting that the announcers are constantly cutting each other off to say "what a crushing hit" or the often "LAID OUT". The worst part about this though is that even though they provide you with 5 slider bars for adjusting checking gameplay, changing them makes little to no impact on the experience, leaving the sliders useless. The funny thing is that this games main feature is OPEN ICE gameplay, but it is negated by the extremely easy checking. Even after you have created open ice, it can be easily closed by a check from behind from a player that realistically could never have caught up to the player with the puck.

If you can stand the over the top checking aspect of the game, then you are still left with some other major problems. The feel of the control is one thing that seems similar to last year. Movement for players is very strange, there are two seperate shooting buttons (which can be confusing), passing can sometimes give strange results. It also seems like there is latency to every action you take, especially wrist shots. While those aspects all feel like they are taking control away from the player, deking and shot aiming are pretty good.

While there are some new cool little throwaway features implemented (like line chemistry), all of the neglected problems listed in the first paragraph of this review makes NHL 2005 no better if not worse than last years dissapointing game in the series. The good news though is that ESPN NHL Hockey and ESPN NHL 2K5 are both great hockey games, and are outstanding in comparison to the last two NHL games from EA. It's absolutely no contest, go save yourself $30 and pickup this years ESPN NHL 2K5 instead of NHL 2005. You will not regret it if you care at all about fun gameplay.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Did I mistakenly buy Hitz?, November 21, 2004

By 

James Wolff "puckstop98" (Los Angeles, Ca) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NHL 2005 (Video Game)

I'm an avid hockey fan, player, and supporter of the EA franchise, having played the games since 93. This year EA took a major step back from having a fun hockey game to having a frustrating one. (I've played 21 games into a season on normal or hard (I forgot) and am 15-4-1-1 so I'm not complaining because I can't win.)

Issues: When you switch players it often doesn't go to the guy you'd expect it to go to (i.e. the closest one to the puckcarrier). Your team AI is dumb as a box of rocks and the computer has way too much time to make moves while being a few inches from your goalie. This and weird shots always being scored makes this game frustrating. The real killer is the hitting. No NHL game ends with close to 100 hits per team. Bodies are always flying and there are no calls. This was a bit out of control. Some team information in season mode is hard to find (like who's hurt, hot or cold).

Positives: The game looks good and the skaters move good. It sounds like a real game and the music is limited, but fun. The 4 for all mode is fun for just messing around. The fighting mode (in terms of when you want to fight) is much better. Now you can try to pick one but the other player has to want to dance as well.

Overall EA took a major step back this year making a simulation game into an arcade game that trys to look like a simulation.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as bad as people make it out to be, December 30, 2004

By 

Michael Izzo "Michael Izzo" (Ruther Glen, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NHL 2005 (Video Game)

I am not going to hype this game or make negative aggressive remarks about it either. The problem that we have here is there are no good NHL games in the video game market at this time. I own ESPN NHL 2k5 for the PS2 and I thought it was a terrific game and even improved on last year's ESPN Sega title. That was until I got 26 games into a dynasty and the game froze up on me. Not one of those oh damn maybe I should reset the game and play it over. No, the dynasty froze up. I could not even simulate past the game that I was playing to go on with my franshise. The game played like a 20 dollar game when it happened to me again. This time during my playoff run. I received an Xbox for Christmas and purchased NHL 2005 with a gift card. The game was refreshingly fun to play, although I must say that the ESPN 2k5 game was the better game all around, the fact that the NHL 2005 game shows promise not to freeze up gives me hope that I can somewhat enjoy a hockey game for a console. The graphics are very good and the shadows on the ice and the jerseys are much more vivid and refined than last year's EA Sports title. There are times when players seem to do incredibly impossible moves that I believe are graphic glitches. The players still seem like they are running on a frozen mat and the physics of ice skating do not seem very well done. The dynasty mode is deep as usual and fun as ever. The player models are well done and are looking better and better with every year that goes by especially with the player's looking more and more like their real life selves. The main drawback there will be is that the dynastys only last 10 seasons. There really should be more seasons than that when other EA sports games have dynastys that last 30 years for Madden, 120 years for MVP baseball and 25 years for NBA Live. I recommend this game for anyone who is looking for a DECENT hockey title to play until the players come back from the lock out. Like I said earlier, the ESPN game would beat this game in overall gameplay and fun factor if they did not have those software glitches. I rather have paid the extra 20 dollars or so to have a complete game. Overall NHL 2005 receives 3.75 out of 5 stars. There are too many things that keep this game away from getting a full 4 star rating i.e too much hitting, corny commentators etc...

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