11/25/2023 0 Comments Red line sports![]() ![]() As with the previous releases of EA's NHL franchise, NHL 2006 has craptastic penalty simulation. ![]() This brings me to another peeve of mine - lopsided penalties. This is somewhat effective, and there is a toggle setting in the game for how effective hooking is, however it often results in holding or interference penalties. The other option is to hook or tie up the defender. This works occasionaly, but just as frequently as it results in a turnover, it results in a tripping penalty. Since body contact has virtually no effect on the opposing team's puck possesion (despite the 'puck control' setting cranked all the way to zero, and 'hitting power' cranked up to the max) there are very limited ways to take the puck from the other team. The lack of effective checking is a huge drawback in this game and it makes things extremely difficult when attempting to contain the AI team from moving around at will in your own end. The effect of body checks is laughable, and given the problems with last years version, highly ironic. This is the case for even some of the hardest checks dished out. If an opposing player is carrying the puck and you dish out even the nastiest bodycheck, routinely the opposing player is shaken slightly - along with your own player - but almost always the opposing player manages to retain control of the puck while your own player has just thrown himself way out of position. The problem is, EA has gone from a system that had way too many lumbering, interefering and ridiculous checks to a system where there are still ample body checks - but they simply have no effect. Obviously this had to be changed substantially. Often a game (set on 5 minute periods) resulted in well over two hundred hits. Paul Kariya would have no problem bodychecking Zdeno Chara clear over the boards in NHL 05. Any player could smack the tar out of any other player despite physical attributes. This flaw in the hitting game was incredibly annoying. EA's NHL 05 had many flaws, and one was the overabundance of hitting which barely allowed any kind of offensive game (for me, nearly 99% of my goals were scored from near the blueline off the rush). ![]() However, as the old saying goes, be careful of what you wish for. NHL 06 proves to be a much harder challenge on the 'difficult' setting (the 'medium' and lower settings are still much too easy). I would routinely win games in the 9-1 range, and once I even went through an entire 82 game season with a mediocre team and didn't lose a single game. Even on the most difficult settings, with the AI aggression tapped out, it was much too easy to score goals and much too easy to prevent the computer opponent from scoring them. My main complaint about previous EA Sport's NHL releases was that they were much too easy. Secondly, the game is much harder over previous versions - at least so far. Every visual aspect of the on-ice game has been tuned and the presentation is second to none. The player and arena detail are truly amazing, from the teams, players, on-ice advertising all the way up to the scoreboard and crowd. NHL 06 looks and sounds amazing - at least the on-ice portion of the game does. EA Sports has always been the leader in graphical presentation, and that holds true here. I'll start with the aspects of the game that are actually impressive - mostly because it won't take me long to type them. As it turns out, the demo was not indicative of what the full version brings. Now comes NHL 06 (the PC version, in my case), and after playing the demo for a week or so, I decided that it was good enough, on it's face at least, for me to shell out the $39 to buy the full version. It truly says alot about the quality of a game when people who have obtained a free version don't even think it's worth the time to play. EA's NHL 04 was a huge improvement over the last several releases, however last year, NHL 05 was a major kick in the face to the game playing fanatics who dished out their hard earned coin for that barrel of dung.ĭue mostly to file sharing programs like bit-torrent, several acquaintences were spared the agony of purchasing the product and simply downloaded it. With every passing year, their versions of hockey went from the best available to the bottom of the heap (considering the NHL2k franchise, etc.). Since the late 90's, EA's NHL franchise has been in steady decline. EA Sports has got to change it's catch phrase - " If it's in the game, it's in the game." because honestly, it has absolutely no attachment to how the game actually plays. ![]()
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