Another Gretzky Impression

[bucknuts]

I got impressions after playing this game last nite. I really liked MLB so I was really looking forward to another effort by 989.

A few things became very apparent to me very quickly:

1.All of the camera angles stink because either the players look like ants or the action is too close and key players aren't on the screen. Camera angle became very frustrating. Graphics for the PS2 are top notch and I find it very ironic that the developers couldn't come up with better cameras to show them off.

2.Speed of the game is way too fast even at the lowest speed setting. It felt even faster than EA's game to me. The dizzying speed makes it very difficult to play defense because everything is a blurr.

3.Almost all goals are scored on one-timers and rebounds. Very few slapshots or wristers stand a chance.

4.Rebound goals feel very scripted especially by AI. When the AI needs a score you will see some very strange rebounds that rebound at weird angles directly to the AI (almost like an ESP effect) and the AI seems to almost pick them out of the air on a forehand or backhand and richochet the puck past the keeper. It screams pinball effect.

5. Puck physics are flat out goofy at times.

6. Backhanders, slapshots what's the difference? I saw the AI score on a backhander from the blueline on the 2nd to highest difficulty level.

7. Once you score and are up on the AI it seems like they kick into hyper drive with the puck ping ponging from player to player at a crazy pace with shots being rapid fired on net until someone smacks home a rebound. I saw the AI score two goals the exact same way within a very short time frame. It's very hard to explain except to say the exact sequence of events lead to the exact same method of scoring which definately proved to me that a lot if not most of the AI goals are scripted and they can score pretty much anytime they need to.

8.Some the aforementioned problems could be helped if defensesive control was better but it isn't good. The combination of excessive speed and lack of defensive options to use along with poor switching AI can leave you feeling helpless a lot of times.

9.An insane number of offsides

I could go on but there's no point. It's a shame the game doesn't play better or have better camera angles because despite everything I mentioned you can tell that a lot of work went into this game. There are times when you scratch your head and go this game should be better than this. The manual has a laundry list as long as your arm of people the that put this product together. I've never seen a team this big. It makes you wonder how out of all these people no one said hey "our camera angles stink" or "man we need to slow this thing down". Just those two things alone would have helped and they are extremely obvious.