First Impressions: NHL 2K9

NHL 2K9 is of course another iteration of 2K’s NHL competitor to EA. In the past, it had been making strides to catch up, keep with, or even get ahead of EA in the hockey category. This year however, this is not the case. The game feels like it has gotten stuck in a few years ago, and isn’t surging forward with innovations to keep upgrading and advancing hockey gameplay. Not to say the gameplay isn’t fun. It’s fairly exciting at first, but after a while, you notice the kind of hectic, spastic type play in the game. It would be cream of the hockey crop a couple years ago, but now, it seems time for 2k to start from scratch for 2K(10?).

There is some good things, like the fact that they did get a decent control system down compared to the year before, with a few different main options to work from. Another great part of it is that 12 real human players on 12 different consoles can play a game together, and that is a cool feature in any sports game, no doubt about it.

Graphics: Fairly decent graphics. The character models are good, some other stuff not so much.

Sounds: Good enough, good announcers, decent soundtrack, it works, nothing to complain about, but I’m not shouting praises either.

Xbox Live: With the 12 player online action, and online leagues, this could be the best and saving part of the game.

Currently Left Off At: Finished one season, lost in the playoffs, and played about 5 online matches.

Best Experience: Playing online with 11 others, even though all hockey know-how went out the window as everybody wanted to score.

Biggest Complaint: Need to work on new things, starting to get stale.

Will You Continue Playing: Possibly if there wasn’t so many other AAA games out now taking up my time.