The folks at EA have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to sports games but lately they seem to be on a major roll, especially the EA Canada branch. They have put out the best quality games on the most consistent level of any gamemaker since Bullfrog began in the late eighties. The latest achievement in excellence from EA Canada is the newly released NHL96. The follow-up to NHL95, this product shows that surviving in the PC gaming market does not always require the most original ideas. Hockey is not a new concept for PC gaming, but EA seems to make it feel like a fresh new idea by injecting it with new and innovative features while utilizing all of the strengths of the CD-ROM. No one can do a sports game like EA and they just keep getting better and better.
The goal of NHL96 is to provide the most realistic feel of hockey possible on a PC. Helping to create this feel is a very distinctive broadcast quality surrounding the game. Before the game even begins, the player listens as the very professional-sounding announcer welcomes everyone to the home city's arena and seamlessly talks about the two teams playing in the game. This is one thing that the EA games do better than absolutely anyone else. The words and phrases of all the teams and players are put together so well I'd swear that EA had someone record every possible combination of team and player in every possible situation - it sounds that good. And the looks of the game are equally as great as team and player names, along with all of the game events like penalties, are displayed on the screen like a professional television sports broadcast. The designers have done everything just right to build the perfect atmosphere to suck the player through the computer monitor and into the hockey arena.
As much as the announcer adds to the game, the music is among the best ever used in a PC game. Pulsing, intense CD quality music is the soundtrack for every menu and stat screen in the game. During actual game play, the player is treated to all of the music, organ sounds, sound effects and announcing one would hear at an actual NHL event. Each game opens up with the last part of a very nicely done rendition of either "The Star Spangled Banner" or "O Canada", depending on where the game is being played. The only thing I could see becoming a problem is that the music can be overwhelming at times. It gets very intense and rocks quite mightily, especially during the menu and statistic screens. I thought it was great and added to the game, but I can see where someone who is doing a lot of team editing could get frazzled. You can turn the music off if you don't like it, but my bet is that you'll leave it on most of the time. I just wish there was a wider variety of tunes included since you'll probably hear every track by the time you finish your first game.
One of the best things about NHL96 is that all of the current NHL teams and players are included in the package. In addition, EA has gotten together with Donruss trading cards and packaged a pack of NHL trading cards with every NHL96 game. EA has also put these cards in the game itself, so when you're checking out each team's roster, you're not only presented with a full color photo of each player, you can also toggle the display to show their actual Donruss trading card. A complete set of 342 high-res Donruss hockey cards has been digitized into NHL96, for a total of 668 high-res photos in all. But NHL96 goes beyond just letting you look at the players, you can wheel and deal these guys in any way you want. Trade them, mess around with their abilities, make your own dream team, NHL96 lets you just about anything you want.
But once you get past all of the glitz and glamour there still has to be a game underneath, and NHL 96 delivers in a big way. All of the players move very realistically, even if they don't look like any particular player. They look blocky at times, and when you zoom in on a player they have a tendency to get very pixelated and fuzzy. But playing the game requires you to be zoomed out a bit, and at that distance they look fine. When they get to moving is when the player graphics get most impressive. They skate, stop, turn and take off just like a real player does. The fact that they look very real in movement helps you control them better - it becomes very intuitive after a while. Starting out, the control over the players seems sluggish, but unlike other games I've played (like Merit's bomb of a game World Hockey 95) it's possible to have your player skid to a stop and take off in the other direction as well as executing a smooth arc across the ice. The guys at EA have built in quite a bit of depth in the control of these players, and it really comes through when playing a while, even on a Gravis game pad controller, but it does take a few games before you'll be skating like a pro.
The controls are extremely basic, just push the button or keyboard arrow in the direction you want your player to go. On offense you shoot with one button and pass with the other, while on defense you block with your shoot button and choose the player closest to the puck with the pass button. It's a very simple two-button system that works very well. There are play combinations the player can do by pressing both buttons at the same time, but there's no option to assign those combination moves to a third or fourth button on the keyboard or gamepad.
Each team has four "lines" of players which can be on the ice at any one time. Accessing these lines is no problem, you just pick the line you want by pressing a key on the keyboard. But if you're using a game pad things get a little trickier. The lines are displayed at the top of the screen with their respective fatigue levels shown as a bar. When using a game pad to choose a line, the computer cycles through each line, and when the one the player wants is highlighted the two buttons must be pressed at the same time. This is something I did not like whatsoever. It's a small thing, but as any game player knows, sometimes the smallest things get under your skin, and this feature really got under mine. I hated waiting for the computer to cycle to the line I wanted and I really didn't like having to push my two buttons at the same time. I ended up using the keyboard to avoid this time-consuming procedure. This is the worst feature in the game and I'm surprised it made it to the final version.
There are a ton of little things that make NHL96 a really great game, too many for me to talk about here. This is a super hockey game, the best one on the market today, probably the best one ever made. It uses all of the capabilities of the CD-ROM in a comprehensive hockey simulation that includes exhibition, season, playoff and modem options. It keeps every stat you could ever want to keep and probably a few you really didn't think of. Altogether the graphics are top notch, the sound is unmatchable and the overall package is excellent. EA, especially EA Canada, has another hit on their hands and just keeps proving why they are THE premier sports games creators and one of the all-around best game developers in any genre.
