NHL 2K8 is lacking in too many areas to be considered this year's leading hockey simulation.
Graphics:
NHL 2K8's 60 FPS makes the game play extremely smooth. I spent quite a few hours with 2K8 and the game never once hiccuped or dropped frames during any of the game play modes. Unfortunately that's about the only positive thing that I can say about the graphics. First, the player faces are absolutely horrible. They look somewhat like the actual players but the texturing makes them all look like they have horrible acne or have facial hair that the players simply don't have. The coaches are for the most part completely incorrect. Point in case, the last game that I played was against the Tampa Bay Lightning. John Tortorella was represented by some blond guy that looked kind of like the Assistant Coach, Mike Sullivan. But only barely. The player outlines are somewhat fuzzy when the players are on the ice and close-ups reveal a weird phantom outline that plagued players from last year's NHL 2K7 for the XBox. My biggest annoyance from this year's offering is the net. For some unexplained reason 2K decided to pile snow around the back of the net with two huge piles of snow at the bottom of the new narrower pipes. It's almost like they didn't have time to correctly adjust how the pipes should look at the new angle and instead of fixing it just added a white blob of "snow" to cover it up. I realize that this sounds like a small thing but when looking for the most realistic game of hockey possible the small things kill. The overall HD display and frame rate was nice but there were too many bizarre nuances to make this a believable hockey game visually.
Sound:
The music this year was decent. Lots of added tracks and artists at least make the background music pleasant. In game sounds weren't as stellar. The announcers rehashed a good majority of what they said last year and never really announced the game as it was being played. It's mostly just general references and mundane comments. I really wish they would have switched it up a bit this year. I found myself enjoying the game more with commentary completely turned off while focusing on the on-ice sounds. It's too bad that the on ice sounds are exactly the same as last year. Over pronounced skate-on-ice sounds with little to no useful player comments.
Game play:
This game is a hitting frenzy. Lots of huge fore and back checking, board pins, and neutral zone contact that just isn't representative of the current state of hockey. There is very little to no finesse in this game what so ever. It's impossible to use set pass plays during the fore check because your players will be charged and checked constantly. This is true even on power plays when defending teams should be focused on rotating skaters and keeping the slots covered.
The inclusion of the right-stick puck handling this year is a nice addition and in some ways is easier to manage than NHL 08's Skill Stick. Unfortunately 2K failed to let the goalie AI know about the right-stick puck handling. While one-timers are harder to peg this year charging the goalie one-on-one will almost always assuredly score you a goal. Why? Because the goalie insists on poke checking the center of your feet which is where the puck pretty much always was in previous years. Since you can now dangle the puck to either side the goalie will poke check at nothing, commit themselves out of position, and consistently allow an easy goal.
The Franchise Mode shines, though. I enjoyed every aspect of team management this year. Unfortunately when office simulation is as good as this you really expect the same on- ce and it just doesn't happen. It was very frustrating to me to set what I felt to be the perfect lines based on player skill and my opponent's lines only to have players who aren't enforcers or even physical players manhandle my shooters uncharacteristically. It really felt like it defeated the purpose of team management since you're going to be hitting everything that moves anyway and charging the goalie with any player who happens to have the puck for a quick score.
One aspect of 2K8 that I absolutely loved was net mode. Here you can control the goalie and let your team AI worry about scoring. Once you take control of the goalie you're given the perspective of looking at the ice from slightly behind and above the goalie. There's a colored cone in front you that is either green if you're in proper position with the puck or red of you're out of position with the puck. When someone takes a shot on goal the game goes in to a very, very slow motion animation and a tiny bullseye appears in the net where the puck is heading. At this point it's somewhat like a mini-game because you've got only a few seconds to move a tiny reticule that appears on the screen to wherever the bullseye is located. If you're in position and you cover the bullseye with the reticule you make a great save. If you're out of position your only option is to hit the right stick, stack the pads, dive, and hope for the best. This makes for some really exciting game play as the goalie especially on break aways and shoot outs.
Online:
2K8 completely dominates NHL 08 in online mode. There are so many game options, play style controls, and statistic management that you could realistically never spend any time on single player and be perfectly happy with the game. I haven't experienced much lag, if any, and for the most part found all the online modes to be extremely satisfying.
Overall:
Your choice of NHL 08 or NHL 2K8 is really going to be dependent on what kind of hockey game you enjoy playing. If you're a fan of arcade game play or if you've been a previous fan of the NHL Hitz series you'll probably really enjoy NHL 2K8 even with all of the little quirks both graphically and on the ice. In a complete turn around from previous years if you're looking for the best representation of a simulated hockey game NHL 08 is the easy choice.