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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 13 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 Not great but not totally awful... Sep 23, 2006
By GC
"GRC"
The formerly acclaimed franchise mode is back with new features like minor league management and the implementation of the salary crap. But how do you turn the salary cap off? You can't... Also, improving your team in the franchise mode is much too difficult. The gameplay is similar to last years but a few issues have been fixed like your goalie is maybe a little better and you can now score on first shots occasionally.One thing that was not fixed is the A.I. for instance, your teammates are not as offensively good as they were last year and they are not real helpful defensively either.The commentary still needs to be improved and the new button/control scheme is really odd to me,someone who has played the NHL series of games for over 14 years.
I still think that NHL 04 was the best game EA has made in the past 5 years, if you already own nhl 06 then why waste 30 dollars on this slightly updated version?
8 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 Worse than NHL04 Dec 21, 2006
By Tempuraki
I never rated anything lower than a 3 star, so when I do it must be really bad. And NHL07 is bad.
There are less options when it comes to player creation than previous versions (NHL04 was the last one I owned and I like it a lot). Graphics isn't much of an improvement. There are some additional modes of play but nothing really interesting. There are bugs like if you press ESC key to get the menu in game, you can only use the keyboard to move the cursor and select options, gamepad and mouse are both disabled. Those are all minor problems compare to the degradation of AI from before.
Some highlights (or lowlights):
- goalies ignores the puck if it's a pass. If you have a player going behind the net, pass to him and see the goalie do nothing.
- When I turn the difficulty level up from normal to difficult, what I found was that instead of making the AI smarter, EA simply decided to make AI invincible on offense. Defenders would just bounce off the AI player carrying the puck. I would have surround the AI player with 3-4 players of my own, all checking/hooking/grabbing the jersey/chopping at his stick. No matter, the AI player would just spin free from everyone, wind up the slapshot and scores from 20ft away from the net. That doesn't make game difficult, just frustrating!
- Besides the invincibility upgrade AI received on offense, absolute nothing was different between the normal and higher difficulty levels. AI defense is still weak and if you have no trouble scoring at normal, you won't have any problem at difficult.
On the bright side, you do get the updated roster. Yay.
5 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Goalie AI will make you insane - garbage goals abound !!! Jan 01, 2007
By Christopher Posser
"mrchrisp99"
the gameplay is what it is, it's the same as its been since back in 91 for the oldschool sega genesis. you can still swoop down to the faceoff circle and then cut across the goal line to score on a wrister/backhand, and you can still burn around everyone with the speedboost button. the computer opponents still seem to not have the same laws of physics that the player controlled figures have: turning, stopping and changing directions is still labored for players while the computer opponent is cutting back and forth like they were wearing sneakers on pavement with no lag or difficulty at all.
the differences in this game than previous years is that gone are the days of senseless checking and bowling everyone over. now checks dont really knock anyone down at all regardless of difficulty setting. even on easy my 6'5" 240 pound defencemen bounces harmlessly off a 5'8" 165 pound forward. when you add that the computer toons seem infinitely more successful with clutching and hooking and pokechecks than the player is, and regardless of player ratings for the Player controlled goalie every shot that makes it on goal will likely go in, they passed up inproving player AI for challenge, and went right on to nerfing player controlled teams while uber'ing the computer team. it looks like a pee wee hockey team playing against the detroit redwings. difficulty level doesnt matter for computer scoring, they're going to get anywhere from 5 to 8 goals. the difficulty level only dictates how many you're going to be able to score. at beginner / easy you can outslug the computer and win 11 - 5. on difficult its going into overtime and could go either way at 6 - 5. the hardest setting means you're going to wring your hands and throw controllers cause you'll be lucky to keep possession of the puck for more than 3 seconds and the score will be 0 - 5.
the salary cap is right but signing players is a chore and the contracts arent' reasonable or lifelike and its easy to tork around with the settings to keep a good team (i went to the roster management and transferred every 85+ euroleague player who's salary is 0.7 million or less so ive got a team that averages 86 to 94 and a salary cap number of 28 million of the 44 million max. if you are over or close to cap, no problem just send that high priced veteran down to the minors cause there's not waivers or minor league salary constraints. the last annoyance is that there's some sort of success based statistical upgrades but i havent actually earned any. im playing as pittsburg and overachieving on my team goals which were basically avoid last place in-conference, yet i still have yet to earn a single upgrade point (im bummed cause i want to dump them all into goalie training so maybe my player value 92 goalie could stop an actual puck on occasion - save percentage hovers around .760 giving up 4 to 6 goals out of 11 or 12 shots a game on average).
basically i travel a ton for work and have nothing better to do on my laptop now that SOE ruined Star Wars Galaxies so i can tolerate a poor game. if you can bear the hair pulling out aggrivation at the goalie who cant' stop anything or catch a cold, then this is your game.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 What everyone else said! Jun 16, 2007
By N. Schillaci
The most frustrating aspect of this game is moving from medium to difficult level. If you read any of the previous reviews, it is EXACTLY what they said. The hockey doesn't get any better or any smarter. It simply puts the computer opponent into invinicible mode. Your no longer able to poke check or body check the opponent, they just bounce off you and eventually get the pass off in front of your goalie and the opponent 1 times the puck into the net. (Especially since your goalies suck, they only get about 10-15 shots per game and let in 7 or 8 goals) Also the opponent needs only skate in your direction to knock the puck away from you when your on offense.
But medium difficulty is easy and boring because you win every game 10-1.
So, I uninstalled after I won the Stanley Cup as the Rangers on medium rating.
Weak. Super... Super.. Weak.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Fix the broken AI and this would be really good Jan 08, 2007
By whipsack
All in all I like the game. I think the movement is fluid and easy to get used to. The offense sets up fairly nice and you can move the puck around pretty well.
The only thing that I really hate about this game is the fact that the AI is very boneheaded, other than setting up well in the offensive zone. They will skate right past a loose puck if you aren't controlling them. They don't position very well on defense and you basically have to be in control of a player to steal the puck. Once you get used to all of this, however, I have at least been able to adjust to it. The only other thing is the manual that comes with this game REALLY sucks. It doesn't tell you anything about the interface and menu options. It very briefly goes over the different game types and default controls, but it leaves a lot of questions about the interface and options unanswered.
I am currently just playing on medium difficulty in Dynasty mode. The 1st thing I did before starting the Dynasty mode was create a goalie with very padded stats and then signed him to my team. Then once you start the Dynasty you will have that player. Just make sure to create a free agent. You will have to worry about the salary cap so you can't totally buff your team without going over the cap. I think it's more fun and challenging having some so-so players anyways.
I would reccommend this game, but make sure to go through the gameplay settings to adjust the settings to how you want them. This can take some time to get it just right due to testing them, but it is worth it and makes the game much more enjoyable.
See all 13 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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