NHL 2K3 (PS2)


Ice Hockey? But I wanted ice-cream...

By MARTIN KINGSLEY

Ice hockey isn't one of those BIG sports out here in the land of sun, surf and prawns.

Certainly, we have ice rinks, but we generally use them for more socially fulfilling purposes than watching big boofy blokes hammer each other against an arena wall while whacking a black puck around a sheet of ice in search of a four foot wide net - like Disney on Ice, for instance.

It's an American sport, really.

However, for those with cable (*mutters* lucky sods), watching the game of hockey can become quite addictive, and some just itch to jump into a padded-up plastic body suit and punch Wayne Gretsky in the teeth…or not.

Anyway you cut it, for the serious hockey fan, NHL2K3 is the perennial peak of puck-beating prowess you've been waiting for.

I'm not, I must admit, a serious hockey fan. Certainly, when depressed, I enjoy a burst of testosterone soaked violence as much as the next guy, but otherwise I've never really seen the appeal. Yet even I, jaded as I am, found NHL2K3 to be quite a fun little package.

I'd like to say that NHL2K3 is also a real looker, but it's not. By the standards of certain other games that shall remain nameless (Space Channel 5: Part 2 cough-cough), it's good-looking, but compared to EA's NHL 2003 and Midway's NHL Hitz 20-03, it seems a bit dull, although not horrific by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, while I'm still hovering around the topic of visual presentation, I'm forced to say that NHL2K3 has the worst menus and overall presentation of any of the 2K3 series.

And one factor that contributes significantly is that NHL2K3 doesn't have any ESPN sponsorship, so no special menus or commentators for you, no.

Compared to its two competitors, NHL 2K3 is the most realistic of the trio, although there are many settings that can be set to suit your own style-of-play, and those looking for straightforward biffo on the ice will be well pleased with the Amateur difficulty setting.

Inversely, anyone with a hankering to get right down to a total all out, true-to-life hockey match can have it.

Another thing that NHL2K3 has over its competitors is the artificial intelligence.

EA's NHL 2003 has a tendency to get its CPU players into some really dumb predicaments, a tendency that NHL2K3 has neatly circumvented.

Again, if smart hockey players aren't exactly to your taste, then that too can be altered from the menu, making them as mentally switched on as a sack of plastic-covered bricks.

Observations made by the commentators, while not quite up to the standard of NFL2K3, are still pretty good, although you can sometimes sense the re-use of sound-bytes.

Sometimes, NHL2K3 feels more like an update than a sequel, more evolution than revolution, improving on the faults of its predecessor, NHL2K2. Despite that, it's still a damn fine play, and unlike the rest of the "Insert-Sports-Acronym-here-and-add-2K3" range of Visual Concepts games, NHL2K3 can be for the pick-up-and-play gamer, or can be adapted to the puck-crazy fanatic.

You can read the manual and understand all or just flick through the controls list and let experience teach you the facts.

Not bad, not bad at all.

ORIGINALITY 80%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 85%
PLAYABILITY 85%
ENJOYMENT 85%
OVERALL 85%