In Third Person

NHL 94 is one of my all-time favourite sports video games. I have fond memories of playing this game for dozens of hours with friends. Many years later, when I got a Super Nintendo again, I made sure to pick up a copy of NHL 94, which to me, still holds up as a fun game to play. I understand that video game hockey has progressed greatly in the last 15 years, but as a non-hockey fan (and as someone who hasn’t played a hockey game since then…yet), that game is still good enough for me.

I was sold on NHL 2K11 on the iPhone when I played the lite version. Almost instantly, I realized that it played a lot like NHL 94. After a few minutes with the demo, I shelled out the $0.99 for it and have been playing it since.

If you’re looking for fancy stick-work or intricate play books, you will not get that in the iPhone version of NHL 2K11. Just like NHL 94, you get the basics of shooting, passing and body checking. For me, that’s all I need and it all works pretty well. The buttons are responsive and I never cursed at the game for messing up any of my button inputs. As for the on-screen directional pad, it works fairly well. However, it doesn’t ‘float’, like in the FIFA World Cup game, where the directional pad will re-center itself when you move your thumb. This can cause you to either move oddly or not at all if you lose position, but it didn’t happen that often. As a vintage video game hockey experience, it works pretty well and I’m having fun playing it.

I’m playing on the default difficulty and I’m noticing that scoring is a bit difficult. That, or I’m playing it wrong. My final scores have usually been in the 3-2 range, but I’ll take over 70 shots on net to get 3 goals and the computer will shoot 21 times for 2 goals. I seem to have the most luck with mid-range slap shots, though I’m sure there has to be a more efficient way to get it into the back of the net.

The feature list is more in-depth than I thought it would be. You get a number of options to play with as far as rules and difficulty. In season mode, you also have the ability to control trades, salaries and the frequency of injuries. There are more than enough options for me to tweak, but there is one omission in the feature-set I find odd. If you want to play a season, you can only choose between 41 and 82 game seasons, which are both monsterous commitments for an iPhone game. I would have liked to have seen 2K China allow for shorter seasons.

This isn’t a perfect iPhone game by any stretch, but it works well for my purposes. I want a hockey game that plays like NHL 94 in my pocket, and this fits the bill. I’ve seen in the iTunes reviews that some users have run into bugs with this game, but I can’t comment on that because I haven’t run into any. If risking $0.99 is too much for you, you can try the lite version for free.

Now that I’ve spent some time with this, I really should get around to that copy of NHL 11 that my girlfriend gave me. I think I’ll crack that open now!