Oh dear, EA seems to have shipped NHL 06 again...
Let me ram it down your throats first of all, NHL 08 on your lovable old PS2 is not what you see in all those flashy trailers, and upon browsing the main menu for the first time it is very apparent that this is a throw-away gesture on the part of EA, knowing that on the back of their huge and almost monopolistic sports empire (I like to call it the Josef Stalin approach) there will be many amongst us that will still go out and buy it.
Unfortunatley we can't happy slap the designers from the comfort of our desk-chairs (and e-mailing them with a little ''gentle slap on the wrists'' is like pissing into the wind), and having a giant whinge about it isn't really going to get me anywhere; so instead i'll be as constructive as i can.
Conspicuous in their absence from the PS2 version are:
Skill stick dekes, Deep create a team mode, Play creator, and many more.
Any excuse for excluding these modes and features is quite frankly not good enough. The PS2 may be no spring chicken but it can support an awful lot more than EA has given it to, and the ommission of some of the game features is quite frankly laziness.
Let me point out before my score becomes questionable that this is not a bad game by any stretch, and on some occasions I do find myself having fun (and promptly slap myself in shame).
The game flows well enough at an almost arcadey speed, and apart from the irresponsive player movement that seems to only have 8 points of movement, the game feels quite free-form. There's something immensly satisfying about cycling the puck around the offensive zone, and thundering up ice to deke round a shakey keeper on a breakaway never really gets old, but with the small amount of dekes on offer (including moving the stick left and right, spinning like a lunatic and sidestepping like an epilectic moron) you can't help feeling that an overblown one handed dangle, or a through the legs goalie destroyer has been reserved for the rich kids and their fancy machines, something that just shouldn't be.
The addition of the skill stick from the 360 and PS2 versions is a nice touch but the players move so sporadically, and the stick itself is so irresponsive and insensitive that to use it you have to make very deliberate movements that, in a game this fast and clumsy, means you glide slowly into a hip-check or the opposing teams net as you try to pull off your move, in which case you fall flat on your arse as you collide with a mix of stick, pad, blocker and iron.
On defense, the computer will do one of two things; either jump into your jersey until it looks as if they've been nailed to your chest, getting in the way at every available opportunity, or bunch up into a group hug around the net and wait for you to slap one in from the blue line. To say that they're dumb is putting it rather mildly.
So, scoring is basically a matter of following the tried and tested method of burning down the wing, playing it across the face of goal and letting your centre heat-seek a one-timer into the top corner. It gets very old very quick, and even with the sliders EA provides the game still feels over dependant on this dull way of reducing Marty Turco to floods of tears.
Wrap-arounds are frankly impossible, breakways can be exploited easily but with very little style and clunky dekes, slappers can be wafted away far too easily and generally tend to go nearer to Row 3 than the goal and in all honesty you end up wishing that you could have NHL 06 back with the new rosters, graphics(?) and uniforms.
As for the graphics themselves, they look polished enough, but for a few gurnish facial expressions, and the presentation will to my mind always suck until Don Taylor is re-instated.
In all NHL 08 does very little to charm the pants of any seasoned hockey fan , or any casual fan (see this UK dwelling reviewer) for that matter.
If this is a message from EA that they are abandoning their loyal PS2 users, then it confirms what we've always suspected...
EA = Evil.