The average sports fan identifies hockey with blazing speed, smoking slapshots, and wild brawls. Because the more popular computer hockey games are designed with the average sports fan in mind rather than the serious hockey enthusiast, they come off as caricatures of the sport rather than realistic simulations. For the past several years, EA Sports has dominated the PC hockey world with its NHL series by producing games with great graphics and sound that are lots of fun to play. But some hard-core hockey fans have argued that EA Sports' hockey is more of an arcade game than an accurate simulation of the sport. With NHL Championship 2000, Fox Sports has created a fun game that gives serious hockey fans more of the realism they demand.
NHL Championship 2000 lets you experience the "coolest game on earth" by taking control of one of 28 teams in the National Hockey League or one of 18 international teams. Games can be played as single exhibitions, a season (short, medium, or long), or as a playoff series. World tournament mode is available for the international teams. As the coach, you can arrange your lines and special teams and make trades. You also have the ability to determine your team's style of play when it's on the attack or defense. The player editor lets you add players not on the roster or tweak player settings to make them perform the way you think they should.
NHL Championship 2000 isn't likely to turn the heads of those who place a high priority on sound and graphics. It also lacks the features (such as a career mode) and polish of NHL 2000, which does a better job of duplicating the atmosphere and excitement of a live hockey game. But for those who want a game that plays and feels more like real-life hockey, NHL Championship 2000 is the better choice.
That's not to say that the Fox Sports game is a dead-on accurate simulation of hockey. One of the game's most serious flaws is that line changes are so slow that attempting to change on the fly is an invitation for the opposition to score. Fortunately, it's usually not difficult to get a stop in play to make a change when you need it without having to ice the puck. Even then, waiting for the line-change animation to finish is irritatingly slow, which makes you long for NHL 2000's speed-game option. But unlike the EA Sports game, NHL Championship 2000 lets you change lines and defensive pairings separately.
In addition, the checking animations are ridiculous. Hard checks frequently send players flipping wildly through the air, making them look as if they belong in the WWF and not the NHL. Less-serious checks will cause players to rebound backwards for yards while the puck magically remains glued to their sticks. These animations don't ruin the game, but they seem out of place and tend to detract from its realism.
Fights are a part of hockey and are simulated in the game. I found that unless my player was seriously outmatched, I could win nearly every fight by repeatedly pressing the "rabbit punch" button. I have yet to see a hockey game that treats fighting in a realistic manner. That's why I normally play with the fighting option turned off.
What I appreciate most about NHL Championship 2000 is that my players can carry the puck into the offensive zone, move it around, and attempt to set up a player for a wrist shot in close to the goal or a one-timer slap shot from the blue line. The dump-and-chase tactic also works. "Snipers" are most effective when taking quick wrist shots in close, while power forwards will make you pay if you give them too much time to tee up for a slap shot. The game forces you to work for a good shot and gives you a feeling of accomplishment when you put the biscuit in the basket.
Another good feature of NHL Championship is that its puck physics are generally more realistic than those in other hockey games. The puck doesn't act like a ball bearing on ice or a Ping-Pong ball in the air as it does in NHL 2000. You can bank the puck off the boards to pass it, or clear it to center ice. Flip passes are also possible, as is dumping the puck into the offensive zone. The only puck behavior that seems out of place occurs when it flies into the air and takes forever to come down, as if filled with helium. Unlike in NHL 2000, I don't feel as if the goalie and the player I'm controlling are the only players on my team playing defense. Computer-controlled players do a respectable job of forechecking, backchecking, and covering for each other. On offense, the computer sometimes makes great plays, particularly when setting up a player for a deflection. However, it also frequently tries to make too many passes and has a disturbing tendency to pass the puck back out of the offensive zone, creating an offside situation.
NHL 2000 and its predecessors are famous for their "money shots" - shot techniques that result in goals a high percentage of the time. The closest thing I found to a money shot in NHL Championship 2000 was scoring with a one-timer after winning a face-off. Realistically, this action works best when a good defense player gets the shot off quickly against a mediocre goalie. But while I scored many such goals against the computer, the computer rarely scored in this manner against me.
One of the problems with the EA Sports NHL games is that the interference rule is almost never enforced unless there's interference against the goalie. In NHL 98, 99, and 2000, players are routinely flattened regardless of whether they have touched the puck, which is blatant interference. Although interference is not called as often as it should be in NHL Championship 2000, illegally checking opposing players will frequently earn your player a trip to the penalty box, as it should.
After spending hundreds of hours playing EA Sports NHL games, getting used to the controls for NHL Championship 2000 took some time. Its system is a bit more complex, but it lets you do more. Flip passes, drop passes, dump-in shots, poke checks, shot blocks, and one-timers became second nature on my Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad. When I went back to playing NHL 2000, the controls seemed rudimentary in comparison.
There also are two bugs in the game worth noting. One occurs after a team pulls its goalie to gain a man advantage when a penalty is committed. After play is stopped and the power play begins, the goalie will sometimes fail to return to his position, leaving the net empty. The second occurs when the puck appears to be iced, causing the goalie to raise his arm to signal icing. But if an opposing player reaches the puck first to cancel the icing, the goalie will continue to hold his arm in the air, creating an easy scoring opportunity.
One basic test of a hockey game's realism is the number of shots on goal generated. While playing at the pro level and using regulation 20-minute periods, my team was able to put nearly 80 shots on goal, which would be a phenomenal number in real-life hockey. However, under similar circumstances in NHL 2000, I frequently put more than 100 shots on goal. This happens in both games for the same reasons: Passing and shooting are unrealistically accurate. Then again, most gamers would get frustrated if they missed as many passes and shots as the real-life pros do.
When I first started playing NHL Championship 2000, its lack of glitz and features disappointed me. But the more I played it, the more I enjoyed it. Not only was the gameplay reasonably realistic, but I also experienced amazing come-from-behind wins and heartbreaking last-second losses. However, no matter how the games turned out, I always felt as if I had won because my team played well or had lost because the opposition earned the victory. It'll be a long time before I feel like playing NHL 2000 again.
