It’s a good one, eh.
PlayStation 2
Released in 2003 by EA Sports
Grade: B+
By smoothing out its skating control significantly, while retaining a speedy, frantic style of play, NHL 2004 is a high-quality hockey game. When this came out, it was the best hockey sim since EA’s 16-bit days, eh.
Where it falls in the series, eh
It’s the fourth of nine NHL games on PS2. EA moved their hockey series up to Xbox 360 for 2007, and PS3 for 2008, eh.
Praises and gripes, eh
EA knows its hockey, eh. But since moving to the 32-bit consoles, starting with NHL 97, the games are all jumpy. Well, they finally fixed it, eh. The players here move smooth, whether it’s speeding up, making tight turns, deking, hitting, picking up the puck, it all feels much more natural in this edition.
This edition also marks the debut of the “skill stick,” where you move the right thumbstick to control your player’s hockey stick. This is engineered quite well for a debut feature, and it’s crucial to use if you want to get good at this game, helping you to protect the puck as you skate around or to beat the goalie with a slick move on net, eh. It’s not perfect, and you can’t shoot by flicking the stick like in later NHL games. Instead, you’re deking on the thumbstick, and you quickly let go to hit the circle button, eh.
You’re forced to skate patiently and pass wisely. The action is frantic, with players always cluttering up the ice in a realistic way. There are certain puck-movement patterns that seem to be unique to this game, eh. Your teammates work together to string together shorter passes. They don’t just skate up ice like robots, eh. They’re skating across to get open, eh.
Goalies are tough, but they will give up a fluky goal here and there. The AI is challenging too, eh. This might be the only hockey game that made me look to the Internet for strategy help, and while I didn’t find it, I did find people complaining that the CPU “cheats.” There are a lot of options for different gameplay aspects, but the defaults seem right, eh.
So, is there anything wrong with it? Well, yeah … the scoring logic is a bit off, eh. Weak shots from bad angles go in, but perfect one-timers get stopped. And the skating control, as much as I praise its smoothness by 2004 standards, it still has hiccups, eh. The strategy settings are nice, but are limited with how much control they give you.
The graphics are up to snuff for 2004, but might be tough to stomach today. They certainly look better on an old-school TV than an HDTV, eh. The rink feels dark and ugly, and the players are a bit muddy, eh.