Saturday, October 09, 2004

Games - NHL 2005

My latest purchase arrived earlier this week - NHL 2005 from EA Sports. I've been a faithful fan of EA's NHL games since 1994, and I buy them as soon as they hit the shelves. So I counted the seconds as the installer slowly loaded the precious bytes to disk, and fired it up with my gamepad close at hand.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm soured pretty quickly. First off, the background music at the main menu sounded lousy, as if they recorded it at a very low quality. Minor detail, I thought - let's see how she plays. So I hit "Play Now", quickly accepted the default game settings, and launched into the game. The opening sequences were well done (especially the Canadian anthem). Once the puck dropped, however, the problems began.

I noticed immediately that there's no play-by-play commentary. What gives? I checked my sound settings, and sure enough, play-by-play enabled. I'll figure it out later, I thought, and returned to the game. Well, next problem - as soon as one of my players gets the puck, he freezes up! Turns out he's locked in "Manual Deke" mode, and I can't pass, shoot, skate, nothing. The player eventually gets clobbered, and the puck luckily bounces to the goalie, who covers up for a faceoff. I then try to pull up the Line Change menu - and can't! I'm hitting the right button combo - Mod + DirPad, but cannot for the life of me get a line change called. So the same line stays out there forever!

Needless to say, I abandoned the game. I went Googling for some answers, and have yet to find any. Other people are having similar problems, but no one has answers. Of course I tried EA's support site, but I can't even find anywhere to post or email a question!

So I'm pretty peeved. I've supported EA for a lot of years, and I've never had this kind of trouble with one of their games before. Don't know if they rushed it to market, or just didn't test it enough. Very disappointing. Hopefully they'll get a patch out soon. 1 out of 5.



On a happier note, purchasing NHL 2005 was easy. I was very pleased (once again) with NewEgg's service. The order was processed quickly with feedback at every step along the way, and it arrived at my door within 3 days. Kudos!

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