This game is not what it's cracked up to be!
User Rating: 6.8 | ESPN NHL 2K5 XBOX
Okay first of all I'm really mad right now because I've been home sick for the past few days and I will be for the next week. My parents told me I could rent one game for this week so I went on gamespot and checked out some games that I could rent. Well unfortunatley for my I picked NHL 2k5. Sure Alex Navarro said it was great but in my opinion this game truly isn't very fun. Gameplay: There are the basic gameplay controls here but Sega decided they would go above and beyond normal controls and made the advanced controls and intermediate controls scheme. This is actually quite clever because if you find the classic controls simplistic (me!) then your going to want to switch over to intermediate or advanced. The players are pretty easy control and the shooting system works well but it is so easy to score. I mean i put it on the hardest difficulty and then to truly test myself against the game I played as Nashville against Detroit. I won 7-2. It is that easy and I don't really think I'm that good at a game I just rented. So I tried again this time I played as Minnesota(played without Gaborik) against Colorado and won 3-0. The point is this game is far to easy. Graphics: There are some pretty decent graphics in this game but only at certain times. Th game can sketch up a bit and look kinda blurry. Great frame rate though. Pretty fancy lighting effects but you can really tell a game has great graphics when you can easily distinguish what player your looking at. In this game you can't. Sound: Oh please don't get me started on the sound. It's atrocious the face-offs sound like nothing the players skating just sounds bland. The only reason It didn;t fail on my chart is because the voice commentary is great. Value: I have to admit there is a ton of stuff to do in this game like air hockey, juke boxes. And a nice long franchise. With a lot of work on the sound this game could of been great apart from the fact that it is so hard to enjoy. It has all these great gameplay aspects but it is just so boring! If your dieng for hockey at least this is better than NHL 2005 but this game has ended my loyalty to aall ESPN games!
