NHL 2K9 Review

I sat down with the NHL 2K9 Demo on the XBox 360 last night. Even though I hadn't bought NHL 2K8, I had tried it out and NHL 08 blew it away and I never went back to it. This will be the case again this year. Visual Concepts studios has basically went back to the drawing board and tried to emulate everything that was successful about NHL 08 last year. 2K9 attempts to add the right analog stick into the mix in two fashions: to shoot and stick handle when in possession of the puck and to swing your stick all willie-nillie to defend when without the puck. There are bumper button controls to either soft or hard-dump the puck. But when you get over the blue line it's almost impossible to get to the puck first. If you try to use the the controls you are forced to press the "A" button to boost(which NHL 07 got rid of to great effect). I found it I went straight up the middle (between defenseman, pressing the boost button) with Marian Hossa and did a wrist shot, the hunch-backed Marc-Andre Fleury will ALWAYS miss it. This is what supremely pissed me off in 2K7; VERY weak goals.

I found myself straight out laughing at the goals I scored. And also at the odd body posturing that the 2K series seems to insist upon. There was a time when the 2K series had such potential. During the "Lean Years" NHL 2K3 was mind blowing. They added scrums along the boards and digging the pucks out of the corners. These are things that neither series has perfected(The EA series has seemed to have given up on it). I'm going to stop being any more critical of this, as it was only a demo(and I only played it for an hour; I found myself to be getting frustrated AND bored). This demo has only gotten me upset that the PS3 owners get to play the NHL 09 demo and I have to wait until September mere days before I BUY THE GAME ANYWAYS. The one final thing I will admit is that I will be lobbying for the powers that be at work buy the Wii version so we can play some kind of hockey at work........