NHL 2K11
2K Sports
Developer: 2K Sports
System: Nintendo Wii
ESRB rating: E 10+ for Everyone (Mild Violence)
The idea of using the Wii to play serious professional sports games should pretty much be out of everyone’s system by now. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that the Wii versions of games like Madden aren’t really trying to pull off the same realistic representations that they are on systems like the PS3 and Xbox 360 anymore.
2K Sports has decided to go Wii-only for the console offering of NHL 2K11 this year, and manages to pull off a game that’s both fun and relatively realistic as Wii sports games go. However, in order for the fun to truly present itself, you have to play the game with the Wii Classic Controller.
That’s because the Wii-remote-plus-Nunchuk implementation feels half-baked. I purposely review games without reading the manual first in order to get a feel for how intuitive the controls are, and then go back and read through the directions to see what I’ve missed.
In the case of NHL 2K11, my first scoring opportunity found me making a slap shot motion with the Wii remote, only to watch a whole lot of nothing happen on the screen. The next time around, I thought I’d try a wrist shot motion. Again, nothing. I finally pulled out the manual and read the following:
Slap Shot: Hold B Button + Wii Remote UP
Wrist Shot: Flick Wii Remote UP
If you’re born and raised in Minnesota, as I was, you learn early on in life that a wrist shot is accomplished with a simple flick of the wrist to either the left or the right. A slap shot is a quick, forceful, downward swing. Neither is accomplished with an upward motion.
There are several other odd control combinations: shake the Nunchuk to deke, shake the Wii remote and Nunchuk together to body check, flick the Wii remote to poke check, etc. I played through several games using these newfangled techniques and never got the hang of it. It just felt weird.
At this point, I was discouraged.
However, when connecting the Wii Classic Controller, a whole new world emerged. “Video game hockey is FUN again!” I thought to myself. And so begins the real story of NHL 2K11, a fun hockey game on the Wii as long as you take all the arbitrary “Wii” stuff out of it.
Will little kids who know nothing of the glory days of NHL 95 on the Sega Genesis like this game? Maybe. Probably not, especially when using the Wii remote and Nunchuk. Will thirty-something dads who grew up playing NHL 95 on the Sega Genesis, then moved on to later versions of hockey games on subsequent generations of consoles like this game? Yes.
The graphics are, of course, much better than the Genesis days. This is the Wii we’re talking about here, though, so don’t expect much better than a slick-looking PS2 game. The crowds, in particular, leave a lot to be desired as they’re like cardboard cutouts. Still, the players’ faces are here and faithfully rendered, animations are smooth, and gameplay is relatively tight.
As for the audio presentation, 2K once again delivers as it’s done time and time again with all of its sports titles. The commentary is engaging and spot-on, the banter in between whistles works well, and there’s a definitively different vibe between home and away games.
So the very core of the game—playing hockey—is fun. Very fun. The AI is pretty solid, though wraparound goals and one-timers seem to hit the mark far more often than other types of shots. I like that 2K’s sports games let you adjust every little difficulty setting to your liking. For instance, if your team’s playing well but your goalie’s a complete sieve, ratchet his skill level from 65 to 80 while leaving everything else alone. It lets you endlessly tweak your teammates’ and opponents skills’ to perfection.
Aside from straightforward single games, there’s a franchise mode, you can play the Winter Classic (though only with Boston or Philadelphia), and there are several kid-friendly mini-games. You can even drive the Zamboni in between periods of regular games. Not to overuse the F word, but that’s fun.
Online play is hit or miss. At times, I found myself waiting and waiting to get hooked up with other players for a quick pickup game, and some of the sessions presented some pretty serious lag. Other sessions went off without a hitch, though. You can set up online leagues to play routinely with your friends or play games casually with others. There are plenty of options.
The biggest drawback, overall, is how poorly the Wii controls have been implemented. This review is coming from a 31-year-old hockey fan that grew up mashing buttons, not flailing his arms around, so I prefer playing with the Classic Controller and would do so even if the Wii controls were great.
Wii owners looking for a good representation of how the console’s motion control system can be implemented into a fun hockey game will likely be disappointed, though. And given the fact that not everyone owns a Classic Controller, having to play the game with the standard Wii remote and Nunchuk control scheme makes it a totally different, far less fun experience.
If you’ve got a Classic Controller and you’re looking for some good, old-fashioned, button-mashing hockey fun, though, NHL2K11 has it.
Techland Score: 6.5 out of 10
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