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3/5 |
Good gameplay but unfriendly setup
(April 14, 2008) |
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I'm not an expert but I've enjoyed watching ice hockey occasionally and enjoyed playing someone else's copy of a pervious version some years back so I though I'd give this a try.
The gameplay is pretty good overall. Its fast and challenging and the AI does respond to your tactics and makes it difficult to persist with a single strategy. The graphics and commentary are both pretty good. I haven't had it for long enough to make a proper judgement on depth, and a true hockey expert would doubtless master it much faster than me, but it seems there's a lot to do and I find it quite addictive. The AI sometimes does stupid things like having one of your team mates trail you while you have the puck, but I think it's generally good.
Where it falls down is off the ice. There's no kind of tutorial, either for helping you master the controls or the rules of hockey (contrast, for example, EA Rugby). It would be a small point but there isn't a proper practice mode either, which makes it even more difficult. Also there are no hints and tips flying around to give you an idea of how to handle, for example, a one-on-one with the keeper or a shootout. This gives it a frustrating learning curve at times.
Much more importantly, the controls are problematic. The keyboard controls are naturally limited so I tried to use my joypad. Whether there's a compatibility issue I don't know - it works perfectly well on everything other game I've tried, including some EA ones, but every time I tried to configure it the game basically froze. It wasn't possible to play on anything other than the "Hybrid" controls, which I don't really like. The button layout can't be changed so it's very counterintuitive at times (a problem I have had with other games).
I bought a new pad with the button configuration it wanted and this works fine. It's still irritating as hell though because it defaults back to "Hybrid" every time you close the game. This means you have to configure it each time you play. EA claim to have released a patch but it doesn't self-install and every time I try to do it manually it gets stuck halfway through and I just end up with the jerseys being blanked out on the selection screens (i.e. I can't see anything) so I have to reinstall the game.
Overall, I'm really enjoying playing the game but it's much more effort than it should be to get playing with the right setup, figure out the controls, practice things and so on. I've been playing Madden games for 10 years and perhaps I'm spoilt by that but I expect better really. |
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