NHL 09 first look

I had a first look at NHL 09 on the PS3 yesterday and I was really impressed with what they have done with the game. Like they said on the nhl 09 website "The best just got better"

Their goal with nhl 08 was to make the game feel more natural to play by using the 2 analog sticks to shoot, create cool dekes and really allow the player to feel like he was controlling his player. They did that well and NHL 08 succeeded at what it wanted to do, it was really cool. The problem tho was that it was a really offensive game, where it was easy to score goals, get away from defensemen and do outstanding moves to score some really nice goals... in bulk.

NHL 09 improved that feel too with the new protect the puck feature where if you hold a button while skating you get in a good defensive position where its harder for enemy defensemen to steal the puck from you.

But nhl 09 main focus was defensive play where their really improved and made feel more natural. Its pretty hard to enter the offensive zone in the center and get a clear shot in the slot now. In fact, its hard to do anything offensively if youre not playing it like you should.

I want to also remind that nhl 09 plays with the 2 analog sticks and the L1 L2 R1 R2 buttons while protect puck is on X, the only button youll use for gameplay movement. That means your 2 thumbs are always on the analogs while your 2 indexes control the other moves (pass, dump puck, skate backward, glide) the only time your finger will be on another button is when you wanna protect the puck, making it so that if you want to shoot from a defensive position youll have to stop holding the button. X is also used to lift the opponent stick to try and steal the puck because every button has a With the puck and Without the puck function. Shooting is done by tapping the right analog, and holding it back for a bit then tapping it for a slapshot (you take your swing to slam the puck hard). The other L and R buttons are pretty easy to pickup. R2 is passing or change players. R1 is to use your stick to sweep the ice if you do it while moving the analog or clear the puck, which you can do effectively too (clearing the puck was always a tactic in nhl games, but this time it actually works because you can slowly flip the puck into a corner of the ice rink and forecheck toward that direction). L2 is skating backward, so if you hold that button and move the analog stick backward, you will certainly start skating backward but that will only be useful if you wanna add that to your offensive arsenal or want to get more control on your player because the game is good enough to now when you should skate backward while defending on the rush and it will make you skate backward automatically. L1 is glide, you use it to slow down your skating speed and just glide, it can be useful when youre at the point trying to get in a good position for a big slapshot. Without the puck L1 is used to get in a position to block shots or pass, and you can move with the analog too. Then if youre in a moment of panic you can always hold L1 and R1 at the same time to dive. Last but no the least, you check by tapping the right analog stick forward when youre without the puck, checking players is tough and as rewarding as ever in nhl 09.

Thats alot of text about controls, but the game feels and plays really naturally and is easy to pick up, then tis hard or impossible to master since youll always do small mistakes but the important thing is that its really fun and feels like hockey.

I havent seen much of the rest, the Dynasty mode seemed very similar to nhl 08's (which was already impressive) but the create-a-player was massively improved. even if its not as customizable as before (you dont have tons of sliders for jaws, chin, mouth, etc etc that allwos you millions of possibilities to make hundreds of characters that all look the same) they cut that down alot and made the character appearance simpler, you choose face form, skin tone, then hair color, eye color and other things like that. but that is not where the character creation strenght lies. This time you can actually choose your equipment which stick you want to use (theres like 30 different sticks, and they are the real ones) and you can select the type of curve you want on your stick to be better with wrist shots, slap shots or an balanced stick. then you have a selection of skates with blade lenght, shorter blades are better for agility but you have less speed, then a more balanced, and long blade for more speed and acceleration. You can choose if you want to tuck your jersey in your pants or no, if you want your socks over your skates or under. Then you get to the skills sliders where you decide how you want to set your attributes on your player, They brought back the Offensive awareness and Defensive awareness sliders to really give your player a personality on the ice. Once youre done, you can go test your player on the ice.

You also have the option to do team practices, practice different scenarios 1 on 0, 1 on 1, 2 on 0 etc etc. practice power play and penalty killing. me and my friend actually spent 2 hours in practice mode just chilling and toying with the controls before doing an actual game, and it was fun.

To conclude, even if i only played a couple hours with nhl 09, I am really impressed, I have never seen a hockey game so complete, and I'm wondering what theyll do in nhl 2010. The only thing I didn't like of it was the music, EA sports usually gets the right ot use 15-20 songs every year and just use those and clips of those for the entire game. They could improve the music clips used after scoring a goal or anytime during a faceoff to make it more realistic and for that I will give NHL 08 only a 9.7/10