NHL 07 Review

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Is there anything right analog sticks can't do? Especially in the realm of sports games, the right stick has become the jack-of-all-trades in recent years, with developers finding all sorts of clever ways to make it emulate moves, passes, shots, hits, and the like. The reason behind this has always been to try to give the player more freedom of control over what they're doing, rather than relying on canned animations via button presses. Never has this freedom been more apparent than in NHL 07 for the Xbox 360. In a near-complete revamp of the series' control scheme, the 360 controller's right stick is now effectively your hockey stick, letting you perform dekes and shots with simple flicks and movements of it. It's a fantastic system that will force longtime hockey fans to rethink how they play the game of hockey--though, unfortunately, it also happens to be just about the only truly cool, brand-new thing in the series' debut on the Xbox 360. Much as EA did with Madden NFL 06 last year, NHL 07's features set has been stripped to the bone, not only offering nothing new, but removing several secondary features and leaving you with nothing but a functional franchise mode and online play. In effect, NHL 07 takes one giant leap forward and a few hops back.

Say hello to the skill stick, AKA one of the coolest concepts to come along in hockey gaming.
So what's the deal with that stick then, eh? The deal is that on the game's default control scheme, you won't use face buttons at all. Passing is mapped to the right trigger and the right bumper; you skate and aim with the left control stick; and the right stick does just about everything else on offense. You press the stick forward to take a quick wrister, wind it back to line up for a powerful slapshot, and move it side to side to deke out defenders and goalies. Those are the basics, but there's more to the stick than that. The key here is that there's very little limit to what you can do with the stick--but you'll have to work for your goals. One-timers are not easy to set up with this control scheme, and if you want to pull one off, you'll need a seriously ideal passing lane and precision timing to do it, just like in real hockey. But when you do, it's immensely satisfying. Heck, just about every goal you fire off in NHL 07 is a satisfying one, because you really feel like you're the one who made it happen. Those dekes you used to fake the goalie out of position and the aim of that wrist shot were all your doing, not just some series of preset animations that happened to do the work for you, and that's a beautiful thing.

Manual Goalie Controls and Tips

Hint by DarkneZZ on January 05, 2007  |  report this hint

In order to play as the goalie manually, all you have to do is be in the correct position and most of the time, the goalie will automatically make the save. It is normal for the goalie to give up some goals even if you're square to the shooter.

You press up on the right analog stick to go into a butterfly and down on it to poke check the puck. (Both of these depend on your game perspective since the controls are reversed for the opposite side of the ice.) Be careful to not poke check too soon because this will cause the goalie to miss the shooter and most likely leave a wide open net. Likewise, if you poke check too late, this will also leave the goalie more vulnerable to shooters. Don't go into a butterfly for high shoots. The butterfly style is used for blocking low shots only. Be careful that you don't go into a butterfly too soon or else the shooter can just shoot the puck over the goalie.

At times it may be hard to play the goalie because you have to be really aware of the whole playing field, including where players are, where the puck is, who has the puck, and etc. Additionally, it's hard to see the puck sometimes if there's a lot of players in front of the net.