Hey guys, just wondering what you fellas would like to see in the next NHL game. Personally, I like the gameplay of EA's franchaise, but the features of 2k6. For that fact, I'd like to get Bob Cole and Harry Neale on the EA bandwagon, I don't know about you, but I get pretty fed up with Jim Houston after a short time.

Also, it'd be nice to see the CHL involved instead of the elite leagues. Frankly, I'd much rather play with a league that I follow instead of players who I don't know. And I'm dying to see EA's rendition of the skills competition. I think they could put a nice spin on it.

What do you guys think? Have any ideas for the next years NHL lineup?

1 comment... DONT BRING BOB COLE AND HARRY NEALE TO EA! The Horror!

Hey Hey! There's nothing wrong with Harry and Bob! The two of them along with Rick Jeanneret are the face of hockey commentary, they really get you involved in the game. I don't know about you, but when I hear Bob get goin it feels like you're sitting there in the stands, these guys are legends man!

Yea, one game with them is enough, actually, I miss the demo version of NHL 2003 I had, it has no announcers in it and how glorious the silence was.

For the EA NHL games, I'd have to say:

- Bring back the CAT and CAP of 2003. It's so much more superior to 2006, they've taken steps backwards from it every year. You used to be able to import your own team logos, player faces, and jersey emblems. In fact, I was able to go to the websites of a lot of the ECHL teams and get player photos to correctly create the players in-game. At one point I had the majority of the teams made with most of the faces spot on and it was awesome. If I got tired of playing with NHL teams, I'd switch over and play some ECHL games . The only problem was, none of the players behaved correctly, but then again most of the NHL players didn't either.


- More/better roster updates.
Hell, after the first month, EA just kind of stops doing them, they totally dropped the ball the past 2 years with this. It's usually up to some customer with a lot of free time to do this, and even then it takes forever and usually has errors with it.


- Better/harder AI.
Instead of making your team dumber and the other team closer to slighty above retarded when you kick the difficulty level up, how about making all the AI controlled players smarter? I've yet to find a comfortable mix of this, it always feels like I'm winning too easily or I'm playing on the worst team in the league.


- Diffrent/more realistic injury types.
I don't know how many times one of my players has been hit with a puck and I thought "wow, shouldn't he be laying on the ground screaming in pain right now?"


- Tone down the hitting and focus more on actual game play.
This is my big grief with EA games, they don't care about the game play, they just put flashy graphics in, slap down some regurgitated code from last year, and charge top dollar for it. Some people refer to EA hockey games as "Tank Hockey" and I can see why when pretty much the only chance at scoring goals you have is on one-timers or break-aways. The rest of the time as soon as you try to set up in the other teams end their whole team comes after you to check you one by one into the boards.


- More announcers/more variety in their commentary.
Seeing as these commentary tracks get old after about 20 games or so (if that), there should at least be diffrent announcers or a wider range of things they will say, if I hear "Oh, he got robbed on that one-timer!" one more time, I'm going to go on a killing rampage shooting crappy announcers.


- Quit spending production time focusing on and then listing features for the game that are soposed to be there anyway like it's something special.
Realistic puck movement? In a hockey game? Oh my, you guys have out-done yourselves!


- Bring back the unlockable content from 03/04.
Especially seeing as how the gameplay needs a lot of work and the dynasty mode isn't as fun as it could be, at least give some incentive for going through all those seasons. I'd like to see something similar to the unlockable stuff in 2k6 (jerseys, teams, players, new modes, mini-games). A REAL party-mode with mini-game options wouldn't hurt either instead of the weak 3 man free-for-all or 1v1 crap they threw in there.


- Get rid of the crappy music or at least make it where you can turn it off or change it in the menus.
I miss the ditties editor of 04 everytime I hit the main menu of 06 now, the music here sucks with the exception of one song, and thats not worth having to hear those other crappy tracks, I've gotten to the point now where I turn my sound off while I'm not playing in-game. Also, how about the ability to have some control over the goal-song in dynasty mode when creating an arena?

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For the 2k series:

- Better graphics.  
The graphics here have been the same for the past 4 or 5 years and they've never really competed with EA's.  At least make an attempt to make a good looking game ....

- Bug fixes.  
Moreso than anything else, this is my biggest complain with 2k.  They add all these cool features in but so many of them are incredibly buggy.  Just 2 years ago there was a bug in the Season mode where after a certain point, it wouldn't log the correct stats for your players and on certain occasions would prevent you from moving forward in your season.

- More commentators/more variety in the things they say.  
I said this one for EA's game too, I don't think I've ever played a sports game where I got more than 1 month (maybe 2) into my season where the commentary didn't start to get old.  If you're going to have it there, at least make it entertaining and not annoying.

- Better puck/stick/player collision detection.  
I know they worked on this for 2k7 but this is a HUGE issue for hockey games moreso than any other sport IMO.  Game developers for the 2k7 series of games (currently only basketball and football) have created some awesome code that makes the models of the players and their enviroments actually touch and correctly collide now so this should get rid of the clipping issues with pucks going through sticks or pads when they really shouldn't.  Also it will make it possible to actually squeeze the puck into spaces as small as 1 inch high and 3 inches wide.

I agree Oster, I think the EA series needs to take a trip back to the past, when there was rarely many complaints about the game.

And I'd like to see it take a jump away from an on ice slugfest and focus more on containing the play with clever positioning and stick work. Also it'd be cool to have a better board play system, so you could really cycle the puck on the PP. And how about better goalies?! If you can make the players skate like they do in real life, how about making a goalie behave and react the same as an NHL goalie would react? I mean, you don't see many goalies who won't turn around in the damn net to stop a puck that's bobbling over the line.

But anyways, good suggestions, if only the developers would listen to the pleas of the fans.

Bring in Don Cherry and Ron Mclean as the commentators! That would be hilarious

I actually like the Ea games and am anxious to see what 2007 brings, hopefully some North American teams instead of Elite

I like one of the original suggestions by Hazerath about the Elite Leagues. I could care less about them and I think that's the same for a majority of people. Putting the CHL in place of that would be difficult since it's difficult to track and Americans might not have as much interest in it but I would definitely love that idea. But how about the AHL affiliates? I know in the EA MLB series (2004 I think) it let you play with the minor teams and let you track their progress and stuff. Might be more fun than that occasional e-mail you get in dynasty saying "hey, call up this guy".

From Oster's suggestions, I haven't really had these problems myself but I liked the idea of unlockable content, that seemed to die off in 2005. And for the love of God, ease up on the insanely hard hitting! NHL 2005 was a joke with how easy it was to hit and hook, 2006 is getting better but it's still a far distance from realistic.