NHL 2004 brings in a new world of hockey action as you try to take your favorite team to the Stanley Cup! Try your luck as a General Manager — control every aspect of your team, and see if you can lead them into history!
- Play as any of 39 international teams, as well as any team in the NHL
- All-new control system for a better passing game and specific checking
- Scaled players give you a better sense of scale — watch as huge defensemen try to stop smaller, quicker wings
- Power-up your checks and watch as your men go across the ice — but be careful, the more checking you do, the more fighting you’ll start
- You can actually control fights now — decide to end it quick or keep it going by pressing a button
List Price: $ 29.99
Price: $ 5.00
For The Die-Hard Hockey Fan,
EA’s NHL 2004 is so realistic, the average gamer might not like this game. However, if you are a die-hard hockey fan and gamer, you’ll eat this game up on its realism.
The Good: Nearly everything. The graphics, vastly improved sound (no more cannon blasts for slap shots), better animations–board pinning, simulation gameplay, and total control keep me in awe every time I play this game. Where some may complain about the advanced control, most will appreciate the fact that you, the gamer, are in 100% control of your player–not the 50% by you with 50% computer assistance as in the past. What do I mean? Passing, stick-handling, shooting, choosing to get into fights, power level of hits and power level of dumping the puck are all “you”. No more is the computer aiming your passes, making your players fight at bad times, or protecting the puck for you (you use the right analog stick to move your stick/deke away from poke checks). You have total control.
Another good point in this game is the realism. No longer can one take a puck from end-to-end by just going up the boards. With computer players trying to poke check the puck away or hook at you, there is going to be the need to either pass or dump the puck in once you cross the red line (you will find yourself dumping the puck a lot–which is good). No longer can you just start taking people out of position and make big hits. This will cause opponents to drive to the net untouched and you will pay with a goal against–Remember, this is a simulation (not arcade) game. You need to play this game like you see it on TV.
Another major improvement is the fighting engine. Sure it was a total joke in the past, but you are going to love it this year. No longer are there two players standing side-by-side like robots taking speedy punches from each other. This year, players grapple and struggle to get their fist to the other guys head or body. Goalies even get into the action when the game gets really heated.
The Bad: There’s not too much to say here, but the game isn’t perfect. During the game, you will notice the computer probably gets away with more hooks than it should, but it’s not a serious problem because you should be passing or dumping the puck to avoid getting angry about this (I was at first, but I don’t mind anymore). Also, there seems to be a problem with your goalie staying close (or “hugging”) to the post on bad angle shots–too many goals seem to go in between the post and your goalie.
The only major problem I have with this game is the online play. The online server for NHL 2004 isn’t nearly as good as the Madden server. It’s seriously flawed with horrible glitches that need to be addressed by EA. [I have yet to get a game in due to a faceoff glitch at the beginning of the game--won't go past the opening faceoff]. EA’s NHL online support is horrible and doesn’t offer much support. If someone quits on you, you have no option to continue–so the game is over and done and the only thing that tells that game existed is a higher disconnect percentage under your username (you don’t get a win if you had the lead when you were quit-on). The online experience seems to be okay from what I hear from other players, but it’s seriously flawed.
Overall, this game is nearly perfect for the gamer that want total control and a total simulation hockey game (most real on the difficult level). You can play online, but expect some problems. Putting the online problems aside, you’ll love this game.
To the average gamer that likes high scores and likes to go out and hit every player that moves–Stay away from this game as these things just do not happen.
To the serious gamer and die-hard hockey fan–You will not be winning many games by simply hitting and shooting. Oh, no–not this year my gaming friend. You are going to have to play hockey! Go and get this game!
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|Another average at best EA hockey game,
NHL 2004 shows some signs of being a quality game, but lacks far too much to actually achieve this. Some features were improved, others took a step backwards and the result is an average at best game that could have and should have been so much more.
We’ll start with the gameplay. The computer is able to use this incredible little “Hold/Hook” feature to get the puck from you at will. Last I checked Holding and Hooking were penalties, but the computer is hardly penalized for these infractions. Naturally you might think that turning around and hooking/holding them would be successful, but don’t worry, the computer is able to skate right through hooks and holds. This leads to many frustrating encounters as the computer effortlessly strips you of the puck while you have to bash a computer guy through the glass to get the puck from him.
The passing can also be frustrating, guys often cut or spontaneously change their direction after you fire off the pass. I thought I had finally got passing down, was getting 80-85% passing and then I was hit with a game in which I completed a whole 56% of passes. As far as I know I didn’t change anything. The nature of the beast? At any rate, passing, while it isn’t guarenteed anymore (that’s good) is perhaps a bit too random now.
The camera angles are also rather poor. I don’t know why EA messed with it’s cameras, but for any of the vertical camera angles the “up” net and the area behind the “up” net is impossible to find the puck in.
The off-ice features are a mess as well. First of all, no more NHL Cards. OK, OK, so you never used them anyway right? But you could unlock stuff with certain cards and earning points to buy card packs was a nice extra element. Well all that is gone. Instead in NHL 2004 there is a menu option called “Unlockables”. Oh, how original. I believe it is tied in with your EA Sports Bio and periodically it pops up and gives you a new unlockable. Exciting, isn’t it?
Now how about that new Dynasty mode you ask yourself? Well, it’s a start at a good mode but is riddled with problems. First of all is this upgrade stuff. You get your team in a crippled state, their facilities are horrible and you have to use upgrades to get them to average and then beyond. Until you do that’s a big ol -10 OV to your players. But every other GM faces this problem too, so the playing field is level … everyone just plays with slow 70-75 OV players until they get their facilities up.
Of course, that’ll take about 35 more upgrade points than you start with, so you’ll need 3500 exp points. That’d be 350 trades or 1750 wins. Win a Stanley Cup or two along the way and it’s probably only 500 wins.
That’s not the only problem either. Dynasty Mode conviently forgets to mention when players are injured and refuses to even give you an injury estimate. Perhaps this may be related to the medical upgrades, but I should still be able to know if he’s in serious health trouble or not. The effect of back to back games on your players is also ridiculous, don’t expect to win the back end of any back to backs: your players are literally pylons out there.
The big effort of NHL 2004 seemed to go into its Dynasty Mode. This means the other features are very bare bones and you really must use Dynasty Mode to get anything worthwhile out of the game. Unforetunately, while Dynasty Mode had some good ideas the execution wasn’t there. And sadly the gameplay certainly isn’t about to “hook or hold” you in where the features fail (haha haha ha …)
The motto of NHL 2004: It had some good ideas, but the execution just wasn’t there.
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