NHL 2002 (Xbox)
	Developer EA Sports Publisher EA Sports Reviewed by Rob "Wedge" Amos [Feedback] [Author Bio] Review Date March 19, 2002

Rating (out of 5.0) 4.0 out of 5.0*

Judge for yourself

Strengths Stylish Presentation Refreshing & Funny Announcers Authentic Gameplay Silky Smooth Controls Weaknesses Limited Custom Player Options Some Confusing Menus Announcing lags behind play occasionally

* Notes Gaming Voice ratings are based on the technical and/or gameplay merits of a given product as well as the developer's choice of features and delivery of same. Our rating is not an endorsement of the thematic content of a given title. Gamers and parents are cautioned to determine if such content conflicts or coincides with their values and beliefs.

NHL 2002 is unique in a most wonderful way: it offers arcade-style presentation for a true sports sim. It was a risky experiment to try – I am like many hard core sports fans and I usually like my sports games in the strong sim flavor. I want it as close as possible to real life. Keep the “hitz” and the “blitz” and any other games that end in “z” away from me. The only problem is that sometimes, real life is not always a good thing. The announcers are boring or annoying, commercials are stupid, players sit out for plays (oops! Sorry, Mr. Moss!), and many other things. This blend of WWF style hoopla and stunningly realistic gameplay is a refreshing new twist. It reminds me of what the XFL could have been like if the product on the field was any good. It has lots of glamour and lots of glitz (forgive the “z”), but also lots of quality gameplay.

The controls are quite smooth. It feels like your thumb is skating on the ice rather than a plethora of polygons. I have never experienced such liquid smooth and reactive control as I did when I played this game. I really liked the fact that real-life physics aren't sacrificed for the sake of what you want to do in the game. For example, if you are skating backwards in real life, you have to do a tight circle, stop or spin in order to skate in the other direction, and you can't do this without a marginal loss of inertia (unless you're Gretzky). Too many times, hockey games will allow you to just change direction with the simple nudge of a control stick. Not here - you have to plan ahead if you want to change directions and actually go through a transition, which adds a bundle to the "sim" aspect of the game.

The rendering and frame rate never lagged, even at the quickest gameplay settings. It was extremely detailed, right down to the players' faces. One subtle touch I liked was that the ice becomes "dirty" (shows skate lines) during a period, and is cleaned off at the beginning of the next. If there were any graphical drawbacks, the replay models were a little choppy at times, and the crowd was the run-of-the-mill 2D cardboard cutout variety.

The sound was exceptional. The announcers, to my great delight, were actually funny! EA has tried to hard in the past to make their games too much of a sim and the announcing became boring and repetitive. Well into my fourth season, I was still getting new material. For instance, on one particular save, I heard "He could see that coming from 1.61 kilometers away.... for our American fans, that's a mile." Clever, but not too cheesy. If you start a season under beginner mode, one annoying feature is the in-game tutorial every single game. This is forgivable because it is actually helpful for the first 7 or 8 games, as the repetition helps you learn the buttons. The announcing lags only on occasion, saying, "Denied!" well after a save was made. The announcers even used my name from the create-a-player feature (“Rob passes it off to Dimetra…”), which was a really fun feature and immersed me deeper into the game. The sound effects were authentic and the soundtrack was acceptable, though monotonous.

A subtle (but sharp) feature was the clock timing. Few of us have the time to sit down and play 20 minute periods every game - it would take a year to finish a season that way! But if you set the game for five minute periods, the clock still shows 20 minutes but it speeds up so that 4 seconds of clock time pass for every one second of real time. This isn’t an earth-shattering achievement, but it shows attention to minor real-life details, and this again adds to the "sim" aspects of the game.

There were a few features I didn’t care for. The player cards were a little “hokey” for my tastes, but it was fun earning the points on the “task lists” to buy these cards. The menus were a little hard to navigate at first, and I found myself having to stop at the beginning of every game into my first season in order to set the camera angles, and basically set all of my favorite options. It was a true pain at times. I would like to see the create-a-player feature a bit more involved than what it is, as it allows only minimal customization.

This is a game that can reach many with its stylish presentation. I can definitely see seven year olds enjoying this game as much as 40 year olds. For hockey fans, this thing is an ice dream…. Buy it now! For tepid fans, it is definitely worth a one-time shot. I don’t think the gameplay alone will be enough to bring non-fans over to the genre, if only because it is a specific type of draw. But, it was a great effort by EA, and if you have an Xbox sports library, NHL 2002 should have a spot in it.