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Hockey Games?

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:30 pm
by JSamuel
I recently had the opportunity to try some version of an NHL 2K game on the Wii. As I was playing, I realized that, although I have never watched an actual hockey game in my life, and although I do not know the rules, this game is really fun.

I want to buy a hockey game for my PC. I'd like to buy a version that someone has made a roster update for. I've looked around in this subforum a little; apparently multiple hockey games have modding communities.

Can anyone recommend a hockey game over other hockey games? Thanks.

Re: Hockey Games?

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:59 pm
by RevanFan
I have NHL 09 on Origin. Also, I heard that NHL 19 might come out on PC, especially if Madden is successful.

Re: Hockey Games?

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:09 am
by JSamuel
RevanFan wrote:I have NHL 09 on Origin. Also, I heard that NHL 19 might come out on PC, especially if Madden is successful.

Thank you, Revan. **downloading NHL 09**

After some research, the best source of roster updates I've found is this website:

http://wasserlasser.com/filebase/

Are there any other communities you would recommend?

Re: Hockey Games?

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 7:59 pm
by IndyRevoly
I see you've made a purchase already, but just in case you find yourself looking for something a little different in execution, I have a recommendation. Having played hundreds of games of 06 on the Gamecube, 07 on the PC, and 09 on the PC, I can say that those sixth generation games largely just become aesthetic/roster updates starting with 06 (maybe even 05, but I never played that). I ultimately gave up on 09 when I realized that I could play on the hardest difficulty with any sliders and just one-time my way to victory over All-Star teams with the game's worst national teams, possibly because I'd effectively been playing the same game since 2005. Like, near-NHL Hitz levels of exploiting the computer with one-timers. The game that I recommend, which I discovered some time after I read this article, is NHL 04, which has incredible simulation hockey and comparatively makes the later NHL games of the generation seem egregiously arcadey (although if quasi-simulation arcade hockey is what you're looking for and the difficulty isn't problematic, 09 is a fabulous game). It lacks the presentation of the later games, but its own isn't too shabby, and the gameplay is simply the best I've encountered (I haven't really spent much time with any seventh or eighth generation hockey games). This recommendation comes with a catch, though, which is that I highly recommend installing the NHL 04 Rebuilt 2017-2018 mod, which I haven't installed yet but which is the latest version of the mod I do use, and is very FF/FI-esque in the scope and intention of what it tries to do. I'd describe 04 as graphically on par with the later sixth generation NHL games (although everything from the past looks kind of blurry nowadays, does't it?). And the best part of 04 for me is that there's a lot of room above the difficulty I play on for me to grow into (I sometimes jokingly think maybe a little too much room when I'm grinding a game out), where obviously I hit the ceiling with the later games. Hope this helps!

Edit:
JSamuel wrote:As I was playing, I realized that, although I have never watched an actual hockey game in my life, and although I do not know the rules, this game is really fun.

On second thought, I may have just spilled quite a few words on recommending something that probably won't be too appealing to you, at least not right now. I should work on my reading comprehension, perhaps.

Re: Hockey Games?

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:55 pm
by JSamuel
IndyRevoly wrote:I see you've made a purchase already, but just in case you find yourself looking for something a little different in execution, I have a recommendation. Having played hundreds of games of 06 on the Gamecube, 07 on the PC, and 09 on the PC, I can say that those sixth generation games largely just become aesthetic/roster updates starting with 06 (maybe even 05, but I never played that). I ultimately gave up on 09 when I realized that I could play on the hardest difficulty with any sliders and just one-time my way to victory over All-Star teams with the game's worst national teams, possibly because I'd effectively been playing the same game since 2005. Like, near-NHL Hitz levels of exploiting the computer with one-timers. The game that I recommend, which I discovered some time after I read this article, is NHL 04, which has incredible simulation hockey and comparatively makes the later NHL games of the generation seem egregiously arcadey (although if quasi-simulation arcade hockey is what you're looking for and the difficulty isn't problematic, 09 is a fabulous game). It lacks the presentation of the later games, but its own isn't too shabby, and the gameplay is simply the best I've encountered (I haven't really spent much time with any seventh or eighth generation hockey games). This recommendation comes with a catch, though, which is that I highly recommend installing the NHL 04 Rebuilt 2017-2018 mod, which I haven't installed yet but which is the latest version of the mod I do use, and is very FF/FI-esque in the scope and intention of what it tries to do. I'd describe 04 as graphically on par with the later sixth generation NHL games (although everything from the past looks kind of blurry nowadays, does't it?). And the best part of 04 for me is that there's a lot of room above the difficulty I play on for me to grow into (I sometimes jokingly think maybe a little too much room when I'm grinding a game out), where obviously I hit the ceiling with the later games. Hope this helps!

Thank you so much; this is just the info I was looking for! One of the things I'm frustrated about in NHL 09 is how difficult it is to get into fights. I've spent a lot of time trying, but I just can't start a fight. Would I have the same difficulty starting fights in NHL 04?

Also, that Mod you linked to looks much better than any of the mods I found for NHL 09.

Re: Hockey Games?

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2018 2:32 am
by IndyRevoly
JSamuel wrote:Thank you so much; this is just the info I was looking for! One of the things I'm frustrated about in NHL 09 is how difficult it is to get into fights. I've spent a lot of time trying, but I just can't start a fight. Would I have the same difficulty starting fights in NHL 04?

Also, that Mod you linked to looks much better than any of the mods I found for NHL 09.

No worries! I think there's a lot more enthusiasm behind modding 04 than 09, probably, given it's from an era where there was a little more innovation happening year-to-year. I honestly couldn't tell you about fights as I turn them off in most hockey games because I think fighting in hockey is stupid, but that's more of a hockey purist critique than a video game critique. I can definitely understand the appeal to a non-fan lol

If you're looking for hockey games where fighting is front-and-center, or at least prominent, I'd definitely recommend one of the aforementioned NHL Hitz games (which were also EA and I think are running on a sped-up version of the early-2000s NHL engine, ala what the Arena Football games EA made did with the Madden engine of the time; it's basically "What if NFL Blitz, but hockey?"), although as I said, they are as broken as any hockey game has been re: one-timers (if you aren't familiar, a one-timer is where someone passes you the puck and you take a shot right on the passed puck, rather than handling it and shooting). ESPN NHL 2K5 supposedly let you fight to your heart's content (I know those late-aughts NHL games were kind of finicky with it; basically, it was very hard for a lesser member of your team to draw a good player on the opposing team into a fight, as this was once a common strategy to simultaneously get one of your crappy players sent off for five minutes along with one of the other team's best players; by then, a "best" player falling for such a tactic was considered kind of pathetic, and now fighting in and of itself is going the way of the Dodo in North American hockey)... NFL 2K5 I could talk about until I dropped dead, but sadly, I never played NHL 2K5.

If you're not averse to titles that are firmly retro, NHLPA '93 has fights that are much talked about, perhaps in part because it was in the movie Swingers, with Vince Vaughn saying he's going to "make Gretzky's head bleed" (of course, Gretzky generally never fought in real life, and so you couldn't actually fight him in the game). Never played it myself, or maybe I did, but if I did, it didn't make any mark on my memory. I think the game I probably played was NHL '94, which I can't remember well enough to make any recommendation for or against.