NHL Hitz 20-02 Review

The Players: This is the only area in the game’s graphical presentation where the overall presentation suffers at all. The players featured from the actual NHL teams in this game really just don’t look right at all. It seems that Midway just made a plethora of generic looking avatars that had some physical similarities with the actual NHL players, but none of them truly come even close to making you just be able to look at any given player and say “Hey! That’s so-and-so!” However, despite that fact that this remains to be true, what is great about it is that it does pretty much NOTHING to ruin what the game overall has to offer. If you really want to be nitpicky about the players looking like their real life counterparts, then go play an EA hockey game (if you wish to be highly annoyed as well), but if not, then this game couldn’t be better!

So overall, based on everything said here, just like stated in the Players section, everything graphics-wise in this game is simply perfect. There really should be no complaints elsewhere, so it deservers the score below!

Just like many of EA’s sports titles, including all the ones from this generation, this game features a list of licensed music. HOWEVER, UNLIKE EA’s sports titles, Midway chose to go down a different path with this hockey game and used not only licensed music, but tracks that they created themselves!

When it comes to the licensed music, tracks like Rollin’ from Limp Bizkit and Mudshovel from Staind would probably end up being the most recognizable and more favored ones. Surprisingly these tracks actually do a great job of “hyping” you up about the game, because the whole experience really is just an adrenaline rush.

Now in contrast from the licensed songs, Midway actually composed their own generic techno and rock themes to make the game sound even better! It would obviously be kind of tough to describe how they sound like, but they could almost make the people who hear them while playing think they could really be heard during any typical sporting event, especially hockey.

The music in this game does nothing more than accentuating the experience, and that’s a rarity for a sports title.

With regards to other features of this game when it comes to sounds, they really are very good as well. Now the announcer isn’t exactly perfect, but it’s fortunate that he has a good list of lines that he says to sort of “describe” the action rather than just doing a play-by-play presentation. During the first couple months of playing this game, you probably won’t hear much repetition with what he says, but some weeks down the road, it will start to become more noticeable. Now while repetition does end up occurring, it really doesn’t become ANNOYING, which is a great thing. Even if you end up not playing the game for a while after winning the Cup or accomplishing something else, you will still find yourself chuckling at the extremity of some of his more prevalent “phrases.”

So while the announcer can bring the overall feel of the game down at times, everything else is just where it needs to be.

The sounds that you hear from the actual playing of the game sound just like they would in any other hockey title or actual hockey sporting event. Impacts with the puck sound like they should, players hitting other players sounds funny but realistic, and even the skating sounds realistic! Not much else could really be said about this because what was said pretty much summed everything up. If you’re a real hockey player or an avid player of hockey videogames, you will not be disappointed by the sound effects in the least!

This is without a doubt the best feature of this game. The easy-to-learn simplicity of it while it still remaining a blast to be involved with would be more than enough to help out any game that really isn’t any good nowadays. Now like stated previously, this is NOT a real hockey simulation game, it’s the EXACT opposite. You can do what you please when you please and how you please! Why is it simple? Well just like stated in the Learning Curve section, this is NOT HARD TO PLAY! The B button is for shooting and poke checking, A is for passing and switching players, X is for checking, Y is for deking and the shoulder buttons are used for turbo! How simpler can it possibly be?

So with that simplicity brings a whole LOT of fun! This game is incredibly fast-paced and packed with action, why else would it be called NHL Hitz? Pretty much everything you do is acceptable and legal, because there are no “infraction” rules in this game WHATSOEVER.

So to break this section down, I will speak about the 4 main features of this game with regards to gameplay, the actual in-game play, Championship mode, Skills mode and Dynasty mode!