By now most of you probably know that I am a huge hockey fanatic. Since I have purchased my Xbox, I have been looking around for a hockey game for it. I did not want to spend top dollar for a 2003 game since the 2004 batch is right around the corner, so I decided to settle for NHL 2002 by EA Sports when I found a particularly good deal for it. I wasn’t expecting too much but to my surprise this turned to be a highly addictive game.
The menus in this game are sharp and extremely easy to navigate. Right away I found out that there are five modes of play: Play Now, Season, Playoffs, Tournament and Shootout. I opted to try out Play Now, and here you just choose your difficulty (beginner, easy, medium or difficult), the teams and you are set to go. NHL 2002 features not only all 30 NHL clubs, but 4 All-Star Teams and 20 international teams as well. Everybody from Canada to Belarus, from Slovakia to Italy has a team. My first game was Team Russia vs. the Tampa Bay Lightning, and I won that game 22-3. The controls were extremely easy to learn, and passing, spinning, shooting, doing dekes, hitting, stealing pucks, making saves, switching players and everything else was natural.
NHL 2002 has some very unique things. For one, other than replays of goals, if you hit another player extremely hard, there will be an instant, slow motion replay that will be repeated three times with a red background. If a goalie makes an awesome save, that save will be shown in slow motion with a different colored background right away as well. Also, this game has EA Story, which means that sometimes the EA Story tag will show up and display a message, such as “Total Domination” if you are controlling the game, or “Hot Goalie” if your goalie makes a bunch of saves. Other signs such as “Probably Shutout”, “Last Minute Comeback” and others will be common. Another cool thing is Emotion. If a team is constantly attacking and making plenty of hits, then their emotion bars go up and this will make the team a little better. This is because the crowd becomes pumped and the players will feed of their energy. If they are getting crushed, then their emotion will be very low.
The opponent artificial intelligence is pretty high, and if they are down by a goal, they will attack, attack, and attack. If they are up with little time on the clock, they will dump the puck. If you turn the penalties off, they will hook and trip you, too. One thing that I did not like was how the fights where set up, as it only takes like four seconds until one person is knocked out, and you can’t even go for their shirt instead of just punches.
You can Create-A-Player, and choose all of his attributes, face appearance and skills. Then the game will track his stats, so hitting milestones such as 500 points will make you feel special. I usually do not create players because I like to keep my games as realistic as possible, but there are a few reasons as to why I did so in this game. You see as this is NHL 2002, the line-ups are a bit outdated, such as half of the Capitals team is longer there, so creating players that are not in the game but exist in real life is pretty useful.
Shootout mode is pretty cool because you choose teams and each team has five shots to win. This means that a player will skate 1-on-1 against the goalie. If there is a tie after five shots, then you keep playing until one team scores while another doesn’t. Tournament is pretty basic, as you set the difficulty and amount of teams (maximum of 16), and teams must advance from their pools in order to compete in the Medal Round. I suggest playing this mode with International teams, and this will give you the feeling that it is the Olympics. Playoff mode is self-explanatory, as teams in the NHL compete for the Stanley Cup without playing any season games.
Season mode is the main mode, and here you choose a team and play a season, which is 82 games but you can set it to less, and hope that you make the playoffs and compete for the Stanley Cup. You can trade players if you wish. Some players become injured, others fatigued, while some players go on hot or cold streaks. All of the awards are handed out at the end of the season, from MVP to Rookie of the Year. After one year is completed, there is a draft and a new season begins, and this goes on for ten seasons. This is not too much, as I am used to having a franchise mode with 25 seasons.
Finally, EA Sports included one awesome thing to add more incentive to play the game. You see, there are a bunch of tasks. For completing a task, you get a point. There are four levels of tasks, and the higher the level, the more points you get. Also, with a higher difficulty mode (e.g. difficult instead of easy), you get more points. For each task, you receive from 200 to 2000 points. Tasks can only be completed once per difficulty. Some of the easier tasks are: score two goals with one player, make ten passes in a period, post a shutout with a goalie. Some of the harder tasks are: get atleast one point with every single player on team in one game, score 500 goals with a created player, beat Canada with Japan in tournament mode. These points can then be used to buy cards, which come in packs. Packs cost 2000 points and contain 10 cards. Cards can be used or sold, but not traded. Most cards feature a player. Each player card is either bronze, silver or gold, gold being the best. If are playing a game, and use a card that is a card of a player on your team, his stats will increase from 1-3 periods. Or if you want to keep the game as realistic as possible, just collect the cards. There are different players that are featured on the cards. Other than player cards, easter egg cards are available, although they are very rare. If you activate them upon receiving them, some weird things will happen in the game. So far I have two such cards: one gives the announces extra deep voices, while the other makes players shrink if they get hit, but if they score then they grow. I have not used these cards so far. A third type of cards is the cheat cards, and there are almost thirty of them. Cheat cards can be used by anybody, and they have different effects, ranging from making an opponent cold, making a player a heavy hitter, giving your team maximum emotion for five minutes, even awarding you with a power-play instantly.
After scoring a goal, you can perform a celebration, such as classic fist pumping and jumping up. Sometimes a pack of cards will have celebrations, although there aren’t a lot. These unlockable celebrations are awesome. One is instant fireworks, another is mimicking an archer, while another is diving to the ice. These animations look great and added some spice to the game.
The graphics are acceptable, and they look pretty good. The player animations and movements, puck and shot physics and goalie saves all look realistic. The player faces look particularly well, and they look like their real life counterparts. Before a game, the load screen features a shot of the city that the game will take place in, or if in the US, it will be a shot of the stadium. The crowd looks fairly realistic, but when they do close-ups it is spectacular, as some of the people wear the jersey of the home team. They cheer when they score, and moan, boo and look disgusted and heart-broken if you are losing. Before the games, there is a 20 or so second intro, will players coming out of their locker rooms, performing pre-game drills, getting the crowd pumped, and this really pumps your adrenaline.
The reason as to why it pumps your adrenaline is because there is Sum 41 and Barenaked Ladies music is the background, and songs like “Fat Lip” fit the game perfectly. Therefore, I enjoy the music, and even the techno music that is blasted when you are in the menus sounds great. The in-game sounds are done pretty well, as the skating movements, shots, hits and saves sound great. I enjoyed the ‘clang’ made by the posts. During shoot-outs, the goalies like to bang their stick into their pads and the posts, just like in real life. The crowd cheers just like in real life, and if you play well, they will respond. The announcers, are decent, the one handling the play-by-play does a good job while his partner makes stupid jokes all of the time. I actually turn the announcers off sometimes and I actually prefer it. The PA announcer is very realistic, although he tends to crack stupid jokes during the intermissions. In real life, each Arena has its own horn that goes off when the home team scores a goal, and this is successfully mastered in NHL 2002.
Overall, I enjoyed playing NHL 2002, and it is the perfect choice for someone that is waiting for a 2004 hockey game. You can find this game pretty cheap in most places, and with the inclusion of cards, you will be busy for a long time. I think that even non-hockey fans would enjoy this game. The lack of a franchise mode is a negative, but there is still a lot of replay value.
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