Its not awesome, but its still good!
The biggest difference is supposed to be the new control system, but its not really that cool. Because the only thing you can do with the right analog stick is that you can pass the puck with it. And that´s supposed to be the unbelievably cool new feature. So it is an big disappointment.
Overall game play is ok. Passing the puck with the right analog stick works ok and the other controls are also good. Controls have changed little from NHL 06, so it takes little time to get used to them.
Graphics in the Ps2 version are not awesome, but they are good. Graphics are much better in the Xbox 360 version.
You can actually recognize most of the players just by watching their faces.
During a game graphics are ok, nothing bad to say really.
Commentary in the game is sometimes really good and sometimes really bad.
Usually commentary is really good, but sometimes the commentaries just keep saying the same things again and again.
There is also Finnish commentary in this game (also Swedish and something else, don´t remember..)
Finnish commenary is usually really bad, because for some reason they speak really slow + there are lots of players who´s names they don´t "know." The Finnish commentary sounds usually something like this: "Number....15.....passes....to....number.....7." So i usually use English commentary.
There is nothing to much to complain about the English commentary. Ok, it could be little better but right now its good enough.
Soundtrack in NHL 07 is actually really good. So its really sucks that you can only listen the songs in menus.
There are lots of things to play. There is the dynasty mode ( you can play it in NHL, Swedish league, Czech league or Finnish league), there is also world cup of hockey -tournament, and just the basic season mode.(+ Single match, penalty shots and stuff like that)
Also there is multi player game. Dynasty mode is 1 player mode, but you can just plug in another controller and continue playing dynasty mode with your friend. Multiplayer game is lots of fun.
You can also play NHL 07 online.
With the easiest difficult settings NHL 07 is really just too easy. But then again with the hardest difficulty its just impossible.
With harder difficulty settings, computer players like to cheat sometimes. I mean, it doesn´t matter what you do, the other team just makes lots of goals. And they usually make the goals during the last seconds of the game and it feels just really horrible to lose the game during the final ten seconds.
There is one good improvement, the goalies are a lot better than last year.
Last year almost every one timer shot went in the goal, but this year its not like that. In NHL 07 you really have to work hard if you want to make goals/ win games in harder difficulties.
This is not really the best game ever, but its really fun to play, its easy to learn, so you can just start playing it, so its "just plain fun."
If you have NHL 06, don´t buy this game, because it´s really just an update from 06 version. If you don´t own NHL 06 and you want a really good hockey game, this is the game you need to buy.