Is there anything right analog sticks can't do? Especially in the realm of sports games, the right stick has become the jack-of-all-trades in recent years, with developers finding all sorts of clever ways to make it emulate moves, passes, shots, hits, and the like. The reason behind this has always been to try to give the player more freedom of control over what they're doing, rather than relying on canned animations via button presses. Never has this freedom been more apparent than in NHL 07 for the Xbox 360. In a near-complete revamp of the series' control scheme, the 360 controller's right stick is now effectively your hockey stick, letting you perform dekes and shots with simple flicks and movements of it. It's a fantastic system that will force longtime hockey fans to rethink how they play the game of hockey--though, unfortunately, it also happens to be just about the only truly cool, brand-new thing in the series' debut on the Xbox 360. Much as EA did with Madden NFL 06 last year, NHL 07's features set has been stripped to the bone, not only offering nothing new, but removing several secondary features and leaving you with nothing but a functional franchise mode and online play. In effect, NHL 07 takes one giant leap forward and a few hops back.
So what's the deal with that stick then, eh? The deal is that on the game's default control scheme, you won't use face buttons at all. Passing is mapped to the right trigger and the right bumper; you skate and aim with the left control stick; and the right stick does just about everything else on offense. You press the stick forward to take a quick wrister, wind it back to line up for a powerful slapshot, and move it side to side to deke out defenders and goalies. Those are the basics, but there's more to the stick than that. The key here is that there's very little limit to what you can do with the stick--but you'll have to work for your goals. One-timers are not easy to set up with this control scheme, and if you want to pull one off, you'll need a seriously ideal passing lane and precision timing to do it, just like in real hockey. But when you do, it's immensely satisfying. Heck, just about every goal you fire off in NHL 07 is a satisfying one, because you really feel like you're the one who made it happen. Those dekes you used to fake the goalie out of position and the aim of that wrist shot were all your doing, not just some series of preset animations that happened to do the work for you, and that's a beautiful thing.
Make no mistake, the learning curve for this control scheme is going to be high, even for longtime hockey game fans. You will almost certainly find yourself instinctively reaching for the usual shoot buttons, and you'll get exactly nowhere. Not to mention that the right trigger passing feels very weird at first (though that's because the passing in general just isn't as responsive as you might expect, and takes some practice to use effectively). However, in a deeply merciful move, the game's "classic" control scheme includes both face button passing and shooting, as well as the skill stick. So you can play around using the skill stick but can fall back on the buttons if you feel like it. Of course, after a while, the skill stick will become second nature, and you'll forget all about those face buttons.
Fantastic as the skill stick and general offense of NHL 07 is, the defense and goalies haven't quite kept up their end of the bargain. Playing defense is mostly how it's been for the last few EA NHL games, save for the cumbersome poke check mechanic that requires you to hold down the right bumper and poke around using the right control stick. Without the right bumper held down, you'll deliver checks with the right stick, just like in the last few games. Save for running around like a lunatic, diving and checking into any opponent with the puck, there's just not much strategy to the defense beyond some basic defensive pressure settings. Computer-controlled defenders do a decent job of blocking your path to the net, though they also feel robotic and don't employ much varying strategy when defending against you.
Goalies generally look and move better than they ever have in an EA hockey game, but they still give up a decent number of dumb, dumb goals. Pucks will bounce off masks, shoulders, gloves, and just about any other part of a goalie's body, creating some silly goals in the process. There are also still issues with players shooting right through goalies when you're up close and personal in the crease and the game decides you're going to score a goal, not to mention goals that ought not be. We had one situation in which the goalie went prone on his back to stop a goal from sliding into the net, and it looked like he succeeded, except that our controlled offensive player took a swipe with a wrister practically inside the net, and the lamp lit. Upon further review, the replay showed the goalie hopping on top of the puck before it ever hit the net, but the puck somehow squeezed out of his back as our stick clipped through the prone goalie. Additionally, unlike in 2K Sports' NHL series, which has found a way to make goalie controls fun via its crease control system, playing goalie in 07 is no fun at all--not that that's exactly surprising.
Fortunately, the joy of using the skill stick makes up for most of the game's defensive shortcomings, though those aren't the only things it has to make up for. The Xbox 360 version of NHL 07 is also missing a lot of the secondary game modes that have been in the series for the last several years, leaving you with a skeletal franchise mode and unremarkable online play. There are world tournament and shootout modes available, but the world tournament mode is the same one we've been playing for the last few years, and shootout mode is exactly what it sounds like: a quick and dirty shootout, and nothing more.
The franchise mode, for what it's worth, at least does one thing very right via omission by killing off the lame owner goals system from the old console versions, but the presentation of the mode feels very austere, with only the most essential general manager and coaching options. One nice thing is that the mode includes a much more realistic salary cap, complete with waiver system and one- and two-way contract signing. However, it's not perfect. In the first season of the franchise mode, there is hardly any free agency period. You finish the first season, the free agent pool never grows, and none of your players, even the ones with zero years left on their contract, drop into the pool. After the second season things resume as normal, but when you're signing new free agent players, an issue pops up with the salary cap. From day one of the free agency period, you can sign as many players as you want with no negotiation, and no concern for the cap. The no-negotiation thing has been an issue in EA NHL games for years, but the budget issue is a big one. The cap doesn't register all the players you've signed until the free agency period is over. If you're over the cap, those players will drop into your minor league pool, even if you signed them to a one-way deal. This means that not only have you signed a bunch of top-tier players, but they all just cleared waivers without issue, leaving you with a bunch of star players in your minor league team, most of whom you could just trade away for picks and other, cheaper players you can use. There are some issues with trade notifications as well. Though the game is great about interrupting your season simulation to let you know when players are going on waivers, it forces you to stop manually and check your e-mail constantly to find out about trade offers.
The online functionality of NHL 07 is pretty par for the course for what EA has had on offer of late. You can play in ranked or unranked matches, track stats, download rosters, and check out leaderboards. That's about it. While, again, this is the usual list of online features for an EA hockey game, with 2K's hockey game light-years ahead in the online game, with online tournaments and seasons, it's tough to be anything but disappointed with what's on offer here. The online play itself is solid, provided you don't run into any laggy matches. Sans lag, the game plays as it should, but when you run into lag, the artififical intelligence response time for a lot of on-ice stuff seems to slow down, so you tend to end up with a lot more missed checks, late shots, and bad goals. There's also an infrequent bug where sometimes the game will snap to a faceoff for no discernable reason. You'll just be moving along the ice, and you're back in a faceoff circle, no penalty, no offsides, no call of any kind.
One thing beyond the scope of the skill stick that is most certainly not disappointing is NHL 07's graphics. This game's visual presentation is top-notch, with some of the best-looking player models and animations seen in a sports game to date. The amount of detail in the players' faces is especially striking; every little detail looks just right on practically every marquee player. Jerseys look fantastic as the players skate and bump around the ice with mostly very fluid motion. There are some stuttery animations here and there, and the skating animations aren't always great, but the on-ice action mostly looks fantastic. Puck physics are very realistic, and the ice deforms nicely as you play. The worst thing that can be said about the visuals is that the game doesn't run at a high frame rate. It is a consistent rate, but it's slower and choppier looking than in 2K's hockey game. Still, the quality of the graphics is apparent, even despite the lower frame rate, and it's hard not to be extremely impressed with how much of a visual improvement this game is over the previous generation of EA hockey games, especially if you've got the HDTV to see it in all its glory (but fret not, SDTV owners, for you'll get quite the visual treat, too).
The audio has also gotten quite a bit better, thanks in no small part to the new commentary team of Gary Thorne and Bill Clement. These are the former ESPN NHL broadcasters who were once a staple of the 2K hockey series, but now they're on board for 07 on the 360, and the flow of their dialogue is top-notch. The twosome has more broadcast chemistry than just about any team doing commentary in any sports game today, and though the commentary itself isn't well written and tends to repeat more than you'd like, it flows so nicely with the action that you can't help but enjoy it. Crowd noise is also fantastic. The screams of the crowd drown the arena when the home team scores, and the subtleties of the boos or moments of near-silence when the away team does something big are equally spot-on. The one down point is the soundtrack, which consists of the usual indie rock and emo stylings you've come to expect from EA Trax. Nothing's too offensive, but none of it stands out, either.
It is very much give-and-take in NHL 07, a game that delivers on bringing an exciting new gameplay mechanic to the table, then rips out a bunch of features when you're not looking. With NHL 2K7 managing to squeeze in every single feature the series has been known for into both its Xbox 360 debut last year and its latest iteration this year, the fact that EA's first hockey title, released more than a year after the console's launch, would be so stripped down is disappointing. But even with that disappointment, you can't help but go back to the skill stick--and what a phenomenal addition it is to how hockey is played on consoles. Those who want to see where hockey gaming is headed in the next few years absolutely should check out NHL 07.
