ECTS: ESPN NHL Hockey Night Hands-On

Konami's ESPN NHL Hockey Night is the latest in Konami's series of ESPN PS2 titles, sports games that not only feature PS2 graphics and gameplay, but are stylized with the traditional ESPN broadcasting flair. Hockey Night was playable at Konami's kiosk in a fairly small demo build and was enough to give us an initial taste for the game.

It's easy to see that Hockey Night's biggest focus is on the graphics. While not as stunning as EA's NHL 2001, Hockey Night still sports some pretty eye candy. Each of the player models is an accurate representation of their real-life counterpart, and motion captured animations shine through in realistic movement in the game. The arenas themselves look good, and even the ice is convincing. While no commentary was in the game yet, basic sound effects helped to raise the believability factor.

The unfortunate part of Hockey Night is that the gameplay apparently took a backseat to the graphics. The game is slow and boring. It takes forever to change direction, and even changing players is a time consuming task. All the proper controls are there - every element you'd want in a hockey game, Hockey Night just has trouble letting you do it. Sometimes pressing the button doesn't perform the appropriate task, sometimes it performs the wrong task. The gameplay will need some serious work if the game is to be any good by the time it ships this fall.