Caltrops - NHL '94 - Re: 2k games

Forum Overview :: NHL '94

by Reichsminister Doktor Goebbels 07/18/2005, 3:21pm PDT

Take 2k3 or 2k5 over 2k4. Though 2k4 was a graphical upgrade over 2k3 and more stable than 2k5, a new development team took over on 2k4 and fucked a lot of things up, gameplay-wise. They are numerous, but the most annoying quirk was that playing conventional defense, either by hitting or poke checking, was ineffective against the AI's ability to protect the puck, and the surest way to get the puck was to execute a ridiculous diving poke check that, once you learned, could be used to drive the puck directly into the corner or to another one of your players or whatever. Online games were nothing but players wildly diving after one another. They also made the goalies too good. When the game is played at a skill level where the CPU skaters aren't retards, the goalies (for both teams) become nearly unbeatable. In spite of the huge number of gameplay sliders, there simply was no happy medium where you could get decent positional play and a beatable goalie. The message boards were crammed with angry kids posting screenshots of 7-overtime games with the final score of 1-0. Many people resorted to using a third party editor to reduce the goalies to a realistic level.

The freeze in 2k5 is avoidable. The CPU teams suck at maintaining their rosters, so you just have to occasionally go to their edit lines screens and press start to give them their "best lines." I made it 7 or 8 years in my franchise before the freeze stuck, and it was that easy to remedy. A lot of people simply shut off injuries and/or CPU trading and then have no problems whatsoever, but I've never found that necessary. (Like always, the injury system in these games is mercilessly fucked up. I think if you ever set it on full injuries, you'd lose the whole team by the end of the game.)

There's also a freeze if you win in overtime at home and you've messed with the goal horn sound level. How the fuck they managed to code that in is a mystery, but if you plan on winning in overtime, expect to do it without any goal noise.

2k3 was a little ugly, but played much more like real hockey than 2k4 and as well as 2k5. Its weirdest quirk was that generated players for the draft were oddly fat. Typical player stature was something like 6', 240 lbs.

If graphics are most important, get 2k5. If you don't care, get either that or 2k3. Both are cheap.