Dreamcast: NHL 2K - noiseredux vs.

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So here I am, devoting time to playing through my Dreamcast collection as it grows. No matter how good or bad the game, I'm giving it a fair shot. So with that said, let me give you some context as far as sports games -- and specifically hockey games -- stand within my history of gaming. You should know that I've never been a sports fan per se. I am a huge Celtics fan, but that tends to be my extent of caring for sports in any organized manner. And yet I've always had a certain appreciation for hockey video games. And I'll tell you why: NHL 94.

Ah yes, NHL 94 was an amazing game. I first picked it up on the Genesis and played it constantly. Though there was no Season Mode yet, there was Playoffs Mode and I endured it many times. There was something so brilliant about that 16-bit rendition of hockey. So brilliant that I even re-purchased the Sega CD port of it later, and have always considered it my favorite hockey game by a long shot. Hell, I even made it a point to pick up NHL 06 on PS2 just because it had NHL 94 on the disc as a bonus, and because 06 was marketed as a serious attempt to get EA's series back to its roots made strong by the integrity of 94.

But alas, EA had nothing to do with the Dreamcast. Instead we got Sega Sports' 2K series of games. But I figured that would be no problem considering what I know of the NBA 2K games that have been released in the last decade. Unfortunately my time spent with NHL 2K has proven to be a bit of let-down.

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Now let me start by telling you what's great about NHL 2K, which is surprisingly a lot. Visually this game is top-notch. The camera flows naturally and the presentation is excellent. Indeed you'll see such incredible attention paid to detail like the blades of your skates etches slits into the ice. The commentary, though limited, is also pretty impressive considering the optical media (though in fairness GD-ROM's were created to store more information than standard CD's anyway). Feature-wise, there's plenty here to keep you busy from quick games, to full seasons, all the way up to play-offs. Add to that the impressive controls, which certainly borrow a bit from the aforementioned classic 94, but manage to add much more responsiveness thanks to the Dreamcast controller's analog stick.

But unfortunately the game flops in a very major way. The AI is just completely unfair. Not all-around either. They almost got it right. But unfortunately the goalies have been programmed to be near impossible to get past. Indeed I spent much time last weekend trying to work my way through Play-Off Mode only to find many games end in a 0-0. The furthest swing was 0-2 -- my loss. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on a game for being to hard. And I'm certainly not hating a game because I kept losing. I'm only hating on it because it seems you can master just about everything in this game only to find that the AI isn't believable. There's nothing "human" about that goalie. There's no way to figure him out and ultimately fake him out.

Over the Summer I read the fascinating book Racing The Beam, which if you haven't read it I strongly urge you to do so post-haste. In it there is a chapter on Pong, and more specifically Pong's AI designed for its 1-Player modes. The book shed fascinating light on how the programmers had to make it so the computer could beat you consistently -- creating a genuine challenge that made you want to try harder. Yet they had to make sure it wasn't "too computer-ish" in the sense that you were reminded that you were not playing against a human component that couldn't be exploited for his weaknesses. I can only hope that subsequent Dreamcast editions of the NHL 2K series had programmers on their teams that had figured out this same sort of balance.