NHL '98 Review

For PlayStation

Rating: Average
 After all the talk of NHL '98 being the re-birth of the 
once-great NHL series and bringing the series back on top of
the hockey heap, we're left with another game that could have
been much, much better.  What makes this game no fun to play
is the same thing that made last year's NHL no fun to play: 
it's simply too hard to score goals, and when you do score, 
it's based on luck a lot more than it is on skill. The same 
goes for goal-keeping, which is even more frustrating because
you could be giving up two goals a game or nine goals a game
and it wouldn't matter how good you're actually playing 
defense.  Also, the checking system seems cool at first with
the hard hits, but after the first couple of checks, it all 
feels somehow "computerized," like all you're doing is 
pressing the button when you're relatively near the person 
you want to check and then you're magically aligned with 
them and knocking them to the ground before you know what 
happened.  Of course, all things in video games are 
computerized, but a good hockey game (such as NHL Powerplay
'96 or NHL '95) will make you feel like you're really 
knocking the crap out of the other team, and this is a 
feeling you just don't get when playing NHL '98. Another 
gripe I have with the checking system is that way too often,
when you're trying to check someone near the boards, your 
player will miss their target and go crashing into the 
boards themselves, which gets annoying fast. Leave NHL '98 
on the shelf.
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NHL '99 Review
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