NHL 2002 for Windows

With the release of NHL 2002, EA Sports has reached its limit. With a game that is worse that the original NHL Hockey, released in 1994, the NHL franchise by EA Sports has come to an end. At least for me, as the last three games kept lowering my expectations, yet every subsequent one has still managed to disappoint me.

Overview
Before getting into details, let me tell you what NHL 2002 is about. It is a hockey game with two main modes ? the NHL season or an international tournament. In this game, you can direct a team to victory. This involves not only directing the players on ice, but also setting relatively detailed coaching strategies, editing your lineup, trading and creating players and taking part in an annual draft. EA has brought one new aspect to the game - you will collect player cards, which you can use to boost the players? abilities whenever necessary.

What?s new?
As I said before, the most important new aspect of the game is the cards system. You will be given a series of tasks to fulfill, and earn points when you do. These tasks vary ? from as simple tasks as scoring a goal to winning two consecutive Stanley Cups or recording 1000 points with a created player. For the fulfillment of every task you earn between 400 and 1000 points. 2000 of these points will buy you a pack of cards, which you can then use or trade away. In addition to the players? cards, you will occasionally find cheat cards, which give you certain boosts when you use them, celebration cards and Easter egg cards. Celebration cards will let you add custom scoring celebrations to your players, while Easter eggs will let you unlock some special modes, such as playing on an enormous stadium.

In addition to the player cards, there are two new display features. The first one is a first-person 3D view whenever you are on a breakaway. When this happens, the game slows down slightly, you assume the role of the attacker and see everything through a red haze. Apart of the fact that this mode is totally unplayable, it looks good for the first two times. The second display feature is instant replay whenever a goalie makes a fantastic save or you score and exceptional hit. In this case, the game automatically stops and you will be treated to a replay from three different angles, after which the game resumes. While EA claims this has been added for the effect, I think it?s there to confuse the player even further. Thankfully, both features can be turned off.

What?s improved?
Before turning to my favorite activity ? complaining and tearing the game apart ? let me tell you about the few positives you find in this game. Actually, there is only one improvement ? you don?t have to knock the opposing player off his feet to get the puck. In fact, pass interceptions and puck steals are very common in this game, adding lots of realism. In addition, the puck tends to bounce of other players and not fly straight through them, as was the case in the previous games. Because of this, there is no foolproof scoring strategy as there was in previous games, where I used to score on every single attack.

And now the bad part?
This game is not a hockey simulation anymore; it is a low-grade arcade game. It is apparent that EA Sports has created this game primarily for Playstation 2, and the PC version is only a byproduct. I have major gripes about the graphics, sound, gameplay, controls and the player cards system.

Graphics. The graphics have seen absolutely no improvement, except of better stadiums where you get to see people dancing during the intermission. The game features resolutions ranging from 640x480 to 1600x1200, but even on my computer, 850MHz Pentium III with 256MB RAM and a 64MB 3D card, the game became choppy on a resolution over 800x600. So we have to wait till the guys who created the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park play them on their computers and tell us how the game looks like on higher resolutions. However, the players actually move more awkwardly than in the previous games, when they are checked there is no real contact between them and they somehow seem to be hovering slightly over the ice.

In addition to these problems, EA has used the pictures of players from the previous year, only pasted them onto a new background. Very often, you will notice how badly the heads were cut out in the first place; I used to do so when I first installed Photoshop 3 all those years ago.

Sound. While the overall sound has some minor improvements, such as the players shouting at each other during the game (in English, which is kind of funny when Kazakhstan plays Ukraine), but the reporting has reached a new low, and I strongly doubt it can get any lower. In order to raise the fun factor of the game, EA apparently asked the screenwriters of Celebrity Deathmatch to write the script. The result is disastrous ? lame jokes, word fighting between the two reporters and very little actual reporting. Things like small commentaries about each player are non-existent, replaced by lines like ?He just contributed into the charity of pain? (whatever that means).

Gameplay. While the on-ice gameplay was slightly improved, the A.I. is virtually non-existent, the coaching opinions have no effect on the game and the rosters contain many players that don?t even exist. Even though I am trying to be diplomatic, I have to say that your team is a bunch of idiots. They love to position themselves so that there is at least one opposing player, preferably the goalie, between you and them, and then they are surprised when all your passes are picked off. In addition, no matter which offensive strategy you use, the offensive wings tend to position themselves slightly behind the goal, so that they have absolutely no chance to score. Because of this, the game degenerates into one-player attacks and into a series of avoiding the opposing defensemen and trying to score.

I was very disappointed by EA using non-existent players in the international rosters. I have noticed a few names I could not recognize, so I did a small search, and found out that virtually all players that are in the national teams but don?t play in the NHL are just imaginary. All EA had to do is to give an intern a two-hour project to get real names off the Internet, using a search engine. The fact they didn?t do it only shows how little EA Sports thinks of its customers.

Controls. In the game, the passing has a new option. When you hold the passing button a little, you will lob the puck into the air and thus avoid the opponents? sticks. While this sounds good in theory, the reality is very different. I found that the A.I. determines itself when it will lob the puck. The flying puck takes much longer to reach in destination, and in this time the receiving player is knocked down, gets up and is knocked down again. Well, almost? In addition, the programmers forgot that a puck can be shot diagonally as well. Using the keyboard, my success rate at shooting passing the puck while holding two directional keys at once is near zero.

Player cards system. The player cards have missed their mark big time. While this system may work in Pokemon, in NHL 2002 is presents a short-term fun replaced by total ignorance. While almost every player has his card, you will soon find out that you will not need most of them, as the players are not on your team. You cannot trade them, you can only sell them. The process of selling a card is very tedious, and so you will soon give up, and as most of your points are tied up in unplayable cards, you will ignore them altogether. In addition, the only boost these cards will give you is a hero icon for a certain period of time. The hero icon is supposed to make a superman from your player, but the only difference I found was that they are slightly faster and harder to knock down. Actually, their shooting seems to be little worse.

A modest proposal
Apparently, EA Sports tried to increase the stickiness of the game by adding a card collecting system. It did not work, and the player has nothing to return to. If there ever is another incarnation of the game, I would like to propose a managerial system, where the player can manage the club?s finances. In addition, an experience system would be nice, where the players improve their stats for completing certain tasks, such as scoring or hitting others. This has been the secret of the highly successful Mario Sports series, so why not here? EA has nothing to lose by now.

Conclusion
NHL 2002 is one of the worst sports games on the market today. In fact, only because of its predecessors I still call it a sports game; apparently it is an arcade game. However, compared with its predecessors, the game is simply disastrous ? the gameplay worse than ever before, the graphics a step back, the commenting worthy a cartoon show and the Artificial Stupidity very prominent. Stay away from this game at all costs and instead get the EA Sports Mania 2, which contains a decent NHL 2000, or try to get NHL 99 if you look for the best game of the series.