Customer Reviews

NHL 2K6

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I live in Dallas, so I have to say I was a bit of a homer in that I wanted it because of Marty Turco's appearance on the front cover. :) Plus the $20 price point probably helped.

But that issue aside, I've bought several hockey games in the past, including the last few in the 2K series. I've also played a few of the EA entries.

The biggest negative in this year's game is the loss of the ESPN branding. Last year when EA was going around buying up exclusive everything, one of the things they got was the exclusive use of the ESPN branding, and with it, the excellent hockey announcers Gary Thorne and Bill Clement. They're replaced this year with Bob Cole and Harry Neale (from Hockey Night in Canada), and in that regard, it's a step backwards. However, you can't blame the developers of this game for that issue. I'm sure they would have rather kept the ESPN branding and announcers. The new guys are OK. I've seen some reviewers say they're horrible, but let's face it - what can you really do with commentary like "..and he steals the puck at the blue line" or "IT'S A BREAKAWAY!". There's only so many ways you can say stuff like that, and when you start playing enough games, any announcer will sound repetetive. Some reviews have really trashed the new guys - I won't say that, they're perfectly acceptable to me, knowing that they can't use the ESPN guys anymore. But the remaining game sounds and music are just as good and customizable as ever. It's really only the ESPN presentation and the announcers lost. The remainder of the audio presentation is still as great as ever.

The game pruports to have the new rules of the NHL for the 05-06 season in the game, and I'm sure they do. It just doesn't feel a whole lot different than last year's title. There's two obvious ones, the new area behind the net is there, and the goalie can't play pucks in the corner anymore - those are obvious, but other minor things are harder to tell in a videogame where so much of it ends up being mash the buttons to get the puck away from the other guy. (I tend to play the game in a way that would get me in the penalty box all the time in the NHL, which is to charge just about every player with the puck). I'm sure folks who pay a lot more attention to the NHL than I do will be able to recognize the new rules changes. I like hockey a lot, but I don't know all the minuatue of the game, I just enjoy watching it, I don't know every single rule, so the obscure new rules are lost on me.

The franchise mode is again a great one - which is where I tend to spend most of my time. I only briefly played on Xbox Live, but it's pretty straightforward there.

There's other game modes that I never bothered with in old versions of the game - they have several party games you can play, the usual exhibition/quick game stuff, playoffs, it's a very robust presentation of game types. If you like hockey at all, I'm sure you'll find something there worth playing.

There are new game modes. Most of which seem like good ideas. "On the fly" coaching, where you can change dlines, olines, crash the net, things like that. As there's a goalie on the cover, there's a new manual goalie mode, which so far as beat me more than it's helped me - I guess I need to learn how to use it properly. It seems like it has some promise for folks who want manual goalie control.

There's more than what I mentioned, I didn't intend to write this to tell you about every single feature of this package. It's fun, it's enjoyable. Sure, it has a few warts (announcers being one), but hey - what game doesn't? There's a boatload of fun and really good modes in it, and for $20, it's a steal.

If you like hockey, get it.

This is a great hockey game. I find myself playing it for hours. I am sad to see the ESPN format gone due to EA buying the rights to that as well but it is still a great game where you and your friend can battle on the ice for hours and never tire. A great game for a great price!!

***UPDATED REVIEW***
NHL 2k6 is awesome, it just takes some time to get used to it. passing is a little bit more realistic and the pro mode allows you to open options and pass to the person you want. you can hit a slashing Brett Hull for a one timer or hit a trailing defenseman for a big slap shot.

PROS
-Stanley Cup animation is AWESOME!!! players throws off their helmets and gloves and hug each other, they shake hands at center ice, and then they name the MVP, he gets his awards from the NHL commissioner and then they raise Lord Stanley. awesome awesome animations.

-custom soundtracks on XBox. put your own music in the game and your own goal music, fight music, music between periods, etc.
like you can play the "Hey" song after a goal, or Minnie the Moocher between breaks of play, or "Kung Fu Fighting" when a scrap breaks out. just flat out awesome!

-new animations, including an awesome intro and good replays of goals, and reactions to goals, like players hitting their stick on the ice upset and players raising their hands cause they just scored a big goal

-hightlights after each period

-fight option is like EA Sports. now, you can choose your fights instead of fighting on a breakaway and loosing a shot to score a goal, so that's cool. also, helmets come off, you can grab, duck punches, or choose where to get your scrap going. meet up at the blue line or center ice and dance if you want.

-total puck control is also on the same control, left thumbstick compared to 2k5 which was on the right thumbstick and moving the puck with the left

-enforcer mode is cool, but it doesn't necessarily mean more fights or stuff like that. enforcers can intimidate players which helps out big on defense

-new NHL rules and logo

-fights are more realistic in that like in real life NHL, there isn't a scrap in every single game. But, like in real life, and like in some games, you can have multiple scraps break out. Here, same thing. Coyotes vs. Dallas, you might get 4-5 fights one night, then zero the next.

-more realisitic gameplay, goals, hits, passing, goalie play

-new better passing allows for passes to exact players

-On-Fly coaching, pinch your defense, crash the goalie, clear the net or release a winger to allow for a breakaway goal.

-crowd reaction is awesome. they explode on big goals and hits, and cheer when you make an awesome penalty kill. Also, after a goal, the crowd really gets into the game. If the game is a blowout, then they are quiet.

-choose your fighters, which is smarter and more realisitic from 2K5. in 2k5 just about anybody on your team would fight, which just doesn't happen. here, you can choose which of your guys fight, and which ones don't, which is more true to life, this way you'll never see Domi or Brashear square off against Modano or Sidney Crosby.

-rookies are included, but they have different names. Crosby is there, but you have to change his name, only his initials are there, and if you don't like the way he looks, then create your own version of him.

-tv announcers are awesome. very professional and never boring. from Hockey night in Canada. there is also a mail bag version they do between breaks.

CONS

-fights average one to none a game compared to NHL 2k5 which could be as high as 10 a game

-crowd in NHL 2k5 was awesome! they cheer for the goals, for the big stops on defense, they ohhh for the close missed goals, etc. here it's good, but sometimes i think 2k5 had a better crowd. the crowd animation is better in 2k6, but the actual crowd noise sometimes is better in last years game.

-no custom goalie masks. not that big of a fuss, but EA Sports has custom goalie masks, including Curtis Joseph's Cujo mask (Red Dog). here, only Cover Boy Marty Turco has a custom mask, everybody else has 2 team versions only.

-Reebok helmet, wow, it's horrible in this game.

-one other thing, the announcers in this game are good, and very professional, but compared to the 2K5 announcers of Clement and Thorne, it is kind of a let down, but not much. the ESPN type announcing and presentation was awesome, not to say 2k6 isn't awesome, but 2k5 was a bit better.

overall, NHL 2k6 is awesome. its a new game with new features and still keeps to its roots as far as fun, price, and the custom soundtracks. here also, like in NFL 2k5, you can edit clips of music. Soundtracks for Xbox for NHL 2K6 is the best, you can add any music you want from classic intros to the awesome goal song that gets you going. highly recommend this game for any hockey fan.

Its seems like hockey fans have been plagued with a whole bunch of games that aren't even worth the name "simulation". Nobody seems to be able to understand the concept of Defence and puck play usually flops from one break away to the next. Fortunately we are one step closer to a true hockey Sim. With ESPN NHL 2K6 you can take control of anyone of NHL's teams in Exhibition, Season, Playoff, or ESPN's praised Franchise mode. On the side are a slew of mini-games and "party mode's" which basicly consist of death match and elimination style games best suited for multiplayer. Although unimportant, they provide some fun away from Season play. If your a hard core Franchiser (like me), you'll find yourself in a world of sliders and switches which make fine tuning your gaming experience easier then ever before. This is a must because the settings on default are hardly perfect. The graphics engine seems a little outdated but who cares, hockey is hockey and the occasional glitch won't phase many players. What most people don't understand is that ESPN isn't just a cheap alternative to EA Sports NHL series (although the $20 tag is nice!), ESPN actually makes better games and in my opinion you can't go wrong. Unfortunately, inorder to get the game to a state that is anywhere near "realistic play", you have to spend an hour or two messing around with the sliders and difficulty settings, on top of learning the games vast selections of controls. It took me a day of fiddling and two Franchise restarts inorder to get the game just right. There are a few things that are poor on this game, for one the Commentary is pretty depressing and after a week of play you'll of memorized every line. Managing team rosters is hellish at first and even on the highest difficulty (Hall of Famer) AI still seems impared. Goalies make drastic moves out of the crease and like to poke-check way too much. Puck movement behind the net seems to really be lacking and its way too easy to make wrap around goals. ESPN's Procontrol is clumsy and bothersome and is better turned off. But with all these things aside 2K6 is the best Hockey game that I have played for a long, long time.

It shuts EA Sports right out of the game.

Xan

The game's look has been toned down. It doesn't look like as good as it did before. It looks more like an arcade game.
the game feels very rushed, like they were trying to get it out at the same time as EA sports.
Commentary isn't bad, but I liked how it was before. Enforcer system is kind of cool.
Game play is the same.
One of my big problems is with the roster. (Yes you can download new ones.) But majority of the great players are free agents, which is cool since you can make your own teams, but it isn't accurate. Also the new prospects aren't in the game, though their new are in create a player.
Overall the game isn't as good as it's predecessor, but it does have it's own new touches.
It's still a fun game, but I think it still needs more tweaking.

I bought NHL 2K6 and also NHL 2K5 and played them both for about 2 hours each. My personal opinion is this: They both are not bad however when compared to EA NHL 05 or especially EA NHL 06, the 2K versions have terrible graphics. I played a complete season mode on EA 06 and LOVED every minute. When a defender hits the post on a shot, it sounds real. Quite the oposite on 2K versions. There was way too much fighting. They fight it seems every couple of minutes no matter what the score. In EA versions, the fighting only will happen if one team is way ahead and the losing team is very frustrated. (just like real hockey). I don't like the faceoff interface. It looks phoney and I don't like the way the puck travels down the ice with the puck circle around it. The graphics on EA are much much more lifelike and the full range of motion when a guy shoots is right on with EA. EA just feels like your actually watching a game. One thing that 2K has thats cool is the ESPN crew on 2K5. This is a plus but not enough to sway me to ever play it or buy it again. What can I say, when you play EA there is no going to anything else. 2K has made a mark on Baseball and especially football (2K football has the best graphics ever seen on any football game, and the 2K5 Baseball is really really superior to any other baseball game I have seen (including EA 03-05). But this time they have really missed the mark with hockey. 2K7 hockey is also suffering from the same graphics shortfalls as 2K5 and 2K6 when compared to EA. Don't waste your hard earned dollars on 2K hockey. For me it's EA or nothing!.

As a huge hockey fan that has bought a lot of hockey games in the past, I understand the need to have a fun, fast-paced hockey video game where you can take your favorite players and punish all the teams you hate. As a programmer, I understand the difficulty in taking something as action-packed as hockey, and capturing it in a game when confined to limits such as buttons and camera angles.

However, capturing this action is the responsibility of the makers of the game, and it is done fairly well for NHL 2k6. For $20, you get a playable hockey game with a few neat new features. The gameplay allows for you to make plays, and it's rewarding when your key passes or setups yield a one-timer or breakaway goal. The best part of this game is by far the gameplay, which for $20, is worth it alone.

The rest of the game falls apart after that though. I personally hate reading video game reviews pick games apart, because then when I buy/play the game I notice all of those flaws. From here on that's all I'm going to talk about (there's a lot of material for inspiration) so feel free to stop if you don't want me to pick out all the poorly done points of this game.

As I just said, I hate reading video game reviews because I never notice the weaknesses in a game until someone else publishes it online. This isn't the case with NHL 2k6. This is the only review of an amazon product I've written, and I was driven to write it because NHL 2k6 has so many frustratingly bad points.

The first I'd like to mention is the rosters. Thank god you can go on Xbox Live and update your rosters, because the game doesn't start with the original 2006 NHL rosters. Sydney Crosby? Nope. Gotta download him yourself. They update rosters from time to time online, and you can bet that if you start a season or franchise, there's no way to update your rosters (understandably) to the new ones.

The second thing is the commentary. Sports games have notoriously bad commentary either way, so I won't talk about the actual voices -- there's an average spread of each kind of line, and hockey is harder than most sports because there are such obscure details about shots and saves (stickside, the puck just bounced in, etc.) The worst thing is the sloppy programming. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the announcers say "They're up by 2" when I'm really up by 4. I've played games where the fans chant the wrong team name -- Penguins vs. Flyers, why are they chanting Redwings?? Commentary is taxing enough on a player, but when it's done so poorly it really ruins the game experience. They'll display a stat saying someone's taken 9 shots on goal and made 2 of them, and the announcers will tell you he's taken over 10 shots on goal. I remember playing NFL Gameday 99 on my PS1 and they didn't have ANY of these little glitches, and as a programmer I know there's no excuse -- it's just a poorly-written game.

There's also glitches in the gameplay of course. Occasionally you can shoot the puck from behind the enemy net and have it just sort of "jump" into the net, resulting in a goal. The puck "jumping" is horrendous in this game. In 2006, the physics engine that keeps track of the puck is actually worse than that of NHL 2000-2002. Times have changed a bit, there's no excuse for having a puck teleport from mid-air to a player's stick when he goes for a one-timer. This also ruins some gameplay, because when a replay pops up (they're usually at random camera angles that don't let you see anything) you see the choppy animation of the puck skipping through space-time.

Beyond the glitches, there's the logical issues. Some of the features are just poorly implemented. The pro-pass is probably the best done of them, and that's really more of a "we should've thought of this awhile ago" feature than a ground-breaking innovation. Football games have been using dedicated pass buttons for years. The maximum goaltending is absurd; there is no camera angle that lets you make an informed decision about which direction the puck is going to go, so players usually just take control of the goalie and press the auto-save button to keep the retarded AI from giving up a goal. The enforcer system is silly and tends to be more of a nuisance, because players stick with the Intimidated mark for a long time and sometimes their stats drops don't make sense at all.

The AI is also poorly done in that it doesn't seem to work very well with the player. Regardless of what difficulty setting or team strategies you use, you're going to have players lolly-gagging in the neutral zone for no discernable reason. Whether they're picking daisies or flirting with the other team's dline on the bench, it gets annoying when you're trying to set up a play and one of your players is out of action.

Sluggish button reaction times not only ruin your plays in-game, but make menus more of a hassle between games. You'll find yourself accidentally going to the wrong menus because it takes a few seconds for the Xbox to understand that you pressed B. The menus themselves are awful. Counterintuitive, uninformative, and their inefficiency becomes even worse when coupled with the bad soundtrack for the game.

Xbox Live is fun and the system for feedback/record keeping is good, but there's usually nobody to play with. A game should have more than 40 people playing on a good day. Beyond that, Xbox Live reveals how exploitable the game is. You can very easily weave in and out of players, maneuver impossibly on the ice, and there are plenty of "money shots" to be discovered online that the game's system simply won't let any player or computer block.

All in all, for $20 you're still going to find disappointments in the game. Even as a hockey fanatic, who usually swallows every shortcoming in a video game for the love of the sport, I'm pretty upset that I went with 2k6 instead of 2k5 or some earlier version. I bought it just to have the great rookies of this season, but half of them somehow didn't make it into the first roster list anyway, so if you don't have Xbox Live your better off buying one of the ESPN-backed years. It's fun, because it's hockey, but it's still just a poorly-done game that proves how much money we're letting programmers make with recycled code, new rosters, and a bit of a visual facelift.

This game is pretty fun. Pretty good graphics, along with good soundtrack and easy controls, I'd be fine buying this game for even $30.00