More Rants

The Dream Game

For a fast, fun arcadish game, players move at their normal speeds, and the cheap crap like being dragged down is taken out. You either get nailed and flattened to the ice, or you bust by and have an opportunity to shoot, pass or setup a play. Since the action is a lot faster, I can see 90 shots per team and maybe 10 goals per game as reasonable. For a really simulated mode, the aforementioned crap should be put in the game to keep things realistic and let people see what they could do if they had Jaromir Jagr's skills, in a world where everyone hooked and grabbed but didn't play.

Doing the windup

Brett Hull floored by little Mike Peca

What NHL 99 did

NHL 99 tried to do both game types at the same time. You see, at the two easier levels of difficulty, your players would have the arcadish aspects (fast, don't get dragged down, pass so good you think they signed a pact with the devil, shoot 105mm howitzers, and hit the other team like a wrecking ball hit the first pig's straw house), while being immune to the computer team's attempts to hold and drag and slow the play to a crawl.

The computer, on the other hand, was completely inept and pathetic. You could pass between the legs of computer defenders, pull stunts that would be impossible in real life. Your players were completely superior… and your goalie! He should start his own religion, he was that perfect - when needed, which wasn't often…

Shrimpy gets another goal

More in-game stuff

Until you changed difficulty to Pro or All Star. Now, your players wouldn't respond, they'd move and turn slowly, act like bowling pins compared to the other team's bowling balls and they fired their pucks with all the force of a fairy's fart. They couldn't intercept a pass, nevermind make one of their own. It was a joke. The difference between Pro and All Star being that at Pro, your goalie was still good. At All Star, I gave up and pulled him out of the net to have an extra man on the ice.

The game didn't accomplish arcadish fun or realistic simulation, despite attempts to do so with those skill adjustment bars which made your players better, but didn't change the fact that they were still morons.

Dropping the gloves

Miroslav Satan (pronounced Shah-tan)

It always bugged me…

Why couldn't EA just do this: either make both teams superhuman (a la NHL 98), where scores would be insanely high, or make both teams sucky?!