We here at Pucks and Recreation decided to take on a daunting-but-important task: creating rankings of the best hockey video games of all time. Because that covers a lot of ground, we decided to split it up into two posts. Here, Joe St. Germain ranks the five-best non-Electronic Arts games. To see Wes Herrmann’s ranking of the five-best EA games, click here!
5) NHL FaceOff 2001
You guys remember 989 Studios, right? They made such PlayStation classics as Syphon Filter, Twisted Metal III … Syphon Filter 2 … Syphon Filter 3 … anyway, don’t let me bore you with my knowledge of 989 Studios. Their real bread-and-butter was sports games, and NHL FaceOff 2001 was the butteriest bread of them all. (I’m kind of a metaphor master.) I first discovered FaceOff thanks to the magic of PlayStation demo discs. Yeah, remember those things? If not, they were basically what they sound like: a chance to play a demo version of a game before it was officially launched, which I believe kids these days would call a “beta.”
The FaceOff 2001 demo had only two teams — defending Stanley Cup participants the New Jersey Devils and the Dallas Stars — and featured a surprisingly competent commentary duo in Doc Emrick and Darren Pang. While those guys are wonderful, though, the scripts they were given were not. Here’s a handful of things that were said during just five minutes of watching YouTube footage:
- Emrick: [After a body check] “Gets hit hard!”
Pang: “Unhhh!” - Emrick: “This guy right here playing brilliantly in goal tonight, Panger.”
Pang: [Silence] - Emrick: “Over to Brunette — crunched, they’ll have to scrape him off the glass!”
- Pang: “Naslund is absolutely hammered out there!”
- Emrick: [After falling behind 2-0] “The Thrashers have lost control of this game.”
- Emrick: [After a body check] “Knocked into the bench!”
Pang: “Welcome to the NHL, big boy!”
So, yeah, not the best commentary, but pretty hilarious. That’s really what FaceOff 2001 is all about: having fun. It is an absolute blast to play. The gameplay is fast and frenetic, a throwback to a time before realistic physics engines and diagramming plays. Body checks are satisfying, one-timers are easy and fighting is as realistic as it gets:
It also features the most unstoppable player in hockey video game history: Pavel Bure. Bure had a 98 overall rating with 99 speed, 99 skating, 98 shot power and 97 shot accuracy. If you won an offensive zone faceoff, passed it to him and pressed shoot, he would score. Every. Single. Time. I once scored 20 goals with him by the middle of the second period and then turned the game off because I felt bad. FaceOff 2001 Pavel Bure makes NHL 94 Jeremy Roenick look like Tracy Morgan:
When it comes to lovable-but-broken hockey video games, NHL FaceOff 2001 is the first that comes to my mind grapes.
4) NHL 2K7
There are some people who would have you believe the NHL 2K franchise was even better than EA’s NHL offerings. I’m not one of those people, because that’s ridiculous — the NHL 2K games were insane. They were fun enough, but they lacked the polish of EA’s NHL series: the visuals, sound, commentary, menus and overall playability all felt just a bit flatter. And oh, God, the controls. Trying to actually play these games was a nightmare: the basics were alright, but with the bumpers and d-pad as “modifiers” things got wayyyyyyy too complicated. It’s like asking your dog to bring back a red ball and throwing it a Rubix Cube.
Still, there was a lot to like about them. Namely: the competition! The 2K franchise was competitively priced (most of their games retailed for $20), introduced plenty of innovative features and, most importantly, at least gave hockey fans a choice in what to buy. (Not to mention provided a reason for EA to keep pushing the envelope on their own franchise.) They weren’t afraid to add mini-games and new modes like pond hockey. Now, admittedly, some features were downright silly. NHL 2K7, for instance, introduced my favorite thing in hockey video game history: Cinemotion. Cinemotion was meant to enhance the in-game presentation by giving games the soundtrack, cinematography and emotional tenor of a dramatic movie. What ended up happening was … this:
Yes, that’s downbeat orchestral music whenever the Thrashers score. Yes, that’s rock music when Detroit cuts the lead to 2-1. And in case you missed it at the beginning, yes, that’s the Russian Pavel Datsyuk saying “Let’s do it, guys, this is our game tonight” in a flat, North American accent. I remember playing as Team Czech Republic once and having Jaromir Jagr hug his linemates after a goal while saying something like “Way to go, boys” in the same exact fashion. The whole thing is amazing and absurd and captivating and I love every bit of it. Take a bow, NHK 2K7.
3) NHL 3-on-3 Arcade
Okay, yes, this is a little bit of a cheat because it’s technically an Electronic Arts game. I don’t really consider it canon, though, and I checked to make sure it wouldn’t be on the other list, so I’m going for it. As the name implies, NHL 3-on-3 is an arcade game, a throwback to the days of simple controls, big heads, zany sound effects, silly powerups and vow-you’ll-never-play-with-your-friend-again-then-start-a-new-game-anyway gameplay. It’s also, to this day, the single most fun hockey game I’ve ever played. I’m serious. It’s super easy to pick up, endlessly replayable and highly addictive. When I’m done writing this piece, I’m literally — literally — going to go play this game.
You can forget about trying to play “real” hockey here: it doesn’t work, and if anything you’re handicapping yourself. Oh, you want to cycle the puck and set up a one-timer? Cool. Have fun with that. I’ll be over here knocking down your goalie, circling around and putting the puck in an empty net. Video games!
The game has tons of real-life NHLers — 32 forwards and four goalies — segmented into three distinct types: fast, strong and all-around. (Fans of Nintendo’s seminal classic Ice Hockey know the drill here — more on that in a bit.) They all control a little differently but scoring is the same for all of them, so you can succeed with almost any combination. Put another way: It doesn’t matter if you put Sidney Crosby and Ilya Kovalchuk on defense and Shea Weber at forward, because the hits and the goals are gonna keep on comin’.
Freezing a guy and shrinking the goalie definitely helps, though.
2) Ice Hockey
Most personnel decisions in hockey ultimately boil down to one simple question: What kind of hockey player are you? Do you land booming body checks? Can you feather a pass between two defenders and right on to your teammate’s stick? Does seeing you load up for a slap shot make goalies dive out of the way like the kid in Mighty Ducks? These are all valid questions, but we can boil them down even further:
Are you a skinny guy, a normal guy or a fat guy?
That’s the dilemma that Nintendo’s Ice Hockey presented us with every time we started a new game. How would we like to build our four-man roster? A team full of skinny guys is gonna fly up and down the ice, but even the slightest touch from a fat guy will send them sprawling to the boards. Conversely, a team of fat guys are the most physical bunch (not to mention the most hilarious), but sneak a normal or skinny guy past them and it’s Breakaway City.
Any GM worth his salt would look for a balanced lineup, but what’s the right balance? It’s up to you! You could pick four normal guys, but you’ll end up with a team that doesn’t excel at anything — and at that point, you’re basically the Flyers, so clearly that’s not going to work. More often than not you’d end up with two teams employing a skinny-normal-normal-fat or skinny-skinny-normal-fat approach or something along those lines. Add in the fact that you could stage epic international contests between the USA and Canada/the USSR, sprinkle in the fact that every fight is a line brawl and top it all off with the fact that a tie game goes to a shootout — and a shootout goes to a goalie-less fourth period?! — and you’re looking at a true classic.
1) Blades of Steel
Yes, setting your lineup based on players’ weights is hilarious, but I’ll be honest: I don’t really love Ice Hockey beyond that. Why? Because we live in a universe where Blades of Steel exists, and Blades of Steel does everything Ice Hockey does but better. It’s the best non-EA hockey video game that’s ever been released, hands down. Let’s break it down with some bullet points:
- Sound: Konami has a reputation for wonderful music and sound effects, especially in the 8-bit era. Blades is no exception. The music itself is great and memorable, but even more impressive is the way the sound helps create an atmosphere. Whereas Ice Hockey has the same music on loop all game, Blades of Steel gives you on-ice audio: passes, shots and hits are all audible, and the way the crowd reacts to a fight or goal stands out. It also has spoken words on the title screen and during the game. Considering it’s a Nintendo game, Konami pulled off something exceptional.
- Gameplay: Ice Hockey deserves credit for adding strategy via the lineup selection. That’s all well and good. But believe me: Blades of Steel is still just more FUN. It’s just more fun. The game controls better, body checks are satisfying, fights are hilarious and goal scoring/goaltending are awesome. Plus: Tie games go to a shootout! Talk about prescient.
- Fights: Considering the NES controller had only two buttons, you might expect fighting to be pretty simple. That’s true. But you know what they say: simple can be sexy! (Pretty sure that’s a saying.) One button punches, one button blocks. The directional pad chooses whether you protect your face or your torso. Neat! Oh, and one minor little detail that I wasn’t even going to mention, but I guess I will: if you lose a fight, YOU SERVE THE PENALTY. Yeah. Think about that. It’s literally insult to injury. Not only did your player get his ass kicked, but now your team is shorthanded because he’s a bad fighter and he sucks and you should all be embarrassed.
- Teams: Was it fun to play out endless United States vs. the World fantasies in Ice Hockey? Sure. But it was even more fun to play as real NHL teams, and Blades of Steel gave us the chance to do that. There were eight teams in all, representing eight of the most hockey-mad cities in hockey: New York, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Minnesota, Vancouver and Los Angeles. That’s right: half of the league was Canadian! Even better, though, were the jerseys. Here’s what it looked like if you and a friend played as Montreal and Edmonton:
On the left: The Miami Heat. On the right: The Green Bay Packers. Or, you know, Montreal and … Edmonton? Hockey!
There you have it, readers: the five best non-EA hockey video games. Agree? Disagree? Hit us up in the comments!
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