http://wii.ign.com/articles/908/908915p1.html

key criticism includes outdated graphics.

For the lazy:

September 9, 2008 - As a huge hockey fan (raised in Minnesota; the state of hockey) I've been dying to see an NHL franchise - be it from 2K, or EA - make the first step onto Wii. Despite the slightly less enthusiastic outlook on the sport compared to things like the NFL or MLB by the general public, NHL has always found one hell of a home in videogames, and for those that enjoy the sport outside of the virtual world, there are few things more entertaining than sitting down with a buddy, checking the ever-loving crap out of him, and hitting a top-shelf slapshot late in the third period. As far as sports games go, it just doesn't get much better than hockey.

It's no surprise then that so many Wii fans have been asking about the console's first game of puck, and when we'd see it debut. 2K is first out of the gate with NHL 2K9, but for as wide open as the door has been left after this first effort, we'd expect the company to be back next year with more, and for Wii powerhouse EA to be hot on the company's heels in delivering some stiff competition when it comes to the hottest game on ice. It isn't that 2K was mindless or sloppy with how the Wii works, or the general design overall, but rather it's the execution that kills it. The team has the right idea, it just doesn't deliver in a bit way this first time around.

A focus on cursor passing was the right move. Now it just needs a solid framerate, a much stronger visual offering, and more modes. Online?

NHL 2K9 for Wii takes a lot of the core ideas in classic 2K hockey, and blends them together in what should be a pretty impressive first effort on the system. Gone is the button-based icon passing found as a classic fallback for 2K games, instead replaced by cursor passing for one and two-touch puck relays. The goalie cam makes a pretty decent transition from the previous 2K games on the other consoles, now using a mix of general vision cone control and gesture-based saves to deflect pucks, and the same slick (in design) interface makes a return, kicking things off with a quick play option already decided right after the boot of the game, and then bringing up the menu tree from there should you need it. The pacing of the game is fast, the motion control for flicking wrist shots and pull-back slapshots (executed by holding the B trigger, pulling back, and flicking forward) works wonderfully, and the hits - unlike a few previous years on Xbox 360 - actually feel good. Mini-games are missing from classic NHL 2K games, but Wii owners do get pond hockey and mini rink play.

The problem here is execution, as we mentioned above. The interface is a nice design, but looks muddy and poorly aged, taken from some extremely compressed assets or sloppily thrown onto Wii with no clean-up for the graphics or coloring. On the ice, the game visually looks on par with - if not a bit under - NHL 2K3 (and yes, like a good head coach we did check film to make sure. Try it yourself.), and the cursor passing, which would otherwise make the game simply awesome to play, is plagued by the same framerate issues the general gameplay suffers from, making both the skaters and cursor control run at 30 frames per second at best, usually dipping from play to play. Rink announcements are often identical or very, very similar no matter which team you select, though the intro videos for each club are a nice touch, as they're team-specific and projected onto the rink before the faceoff. Still, it isn't enough to make up for the sloppy tech behind the game.

It's annoying to see sketchy tech attached to an extremely smart design, especially when its obvious that 2K is taking the game in the right direction on paper. We can't emphasize enough how vital the cursor passing is, even making this game (which has a pile of issues) still very fun to play at times. Motion control works for body checks and shooting, the aforementioned gesture-based goaltending works great, and outside of having IR-less menus and text entry, it all feels very Wii-like. There's still more that needs to be done though, despite just cleaning up what's broken this time around, as there's no create-a-player, the franchise and season modes are very simple, online is nowhere to be found, and the game suffers from an overall lack of options and modes. You get the core 2K shell, but no specific effort on making the Wii version special. And as for that "sketchy tech" we mentioned, it can be found in pretty common framerate issues, a moronic AI (unless you play on Hall of Fame difficulty), and odd animation glitches and pops. It's almost as if 2K is focusing on the 360 and PS3 builds, and making PS2 and Wii a second priority; almost. With that being the case, maybe the team is stretched too thin, and it's time to find an ambitious outside developer to give the Wii version a serious shot.

Closing Comments
As a hockey fan, I'm psyched to see the Wii getting a bit of NHL love. Unfortunately, it's going to take a whole lot more from either 2K or EA, should the company throw its hat in the ring as well, to deliver something that I'd truly recommend as a unique, Wii-specific take on the sport. 2K has the right idea here, including motion shooting, IR passing, and motion-based goaltending, but the core game is just too much of a rushed effort, and the final product is a visually unpleasant, choppy, incomplete package. No create-a-player, no online, frame issues that hurt the IR passing and break up the overall flow of the game; that's not the NHL 2K I know from other consoles.

That's not to say I didn't have fun playing the game - I did - but it's as if the sport has gone through a time warp in its conversion to Nintendo's console. I'm not talking from 2K9 to 2K7, but rather sub-2K3, especially on the visual front. In fact, even then the series was never as thrown together or unreliable as it is here. It's still a fast, generally pleasant game of puck, but in no way does NHL 2K9 prove that the company has the passion or follow-through to make a serious impact on Wii. We want to see this game thrive. As it stands right now, it's a big rough, still fun, but a token rookie year as far as sports games go. 2K, it's time to give this one an overhaul for 2K10.

Rating	Description
out of 10	click here for ratings guide
5.5	Presentation The menu tree, interface, and style is all there, but it's like we're looking at it all through a 2002 filter. There's no IR support for menus or text entry either.
5.0	Graphics Very similar to a 16:9, 480p NHL 2K3 for PS2. At times it looks alright, but frame issues, poor face textures, identical models, billboard crowd, and aliasing issues drop it down a lot.
7.5	Sound Strong commentary, some decent music, and the expected crowd reactions for big hits and home/away goals. Not bad at all.
7.0	Gameplay Frame issues and an annoying port-like feel aside, this game is still a lot of fun to play. Motion works, IR passing is a big step in the right direction, but it's still technically sloppy overall.
6.0	Lasting Appeal Franchise and Season modes are included (and decently built), but the pond hockey and mini rink won't add much for multiplayer. If you love hockey, it'll hold you for a bit. All others, wait for 2K10.
6.8 Passable	OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average)

Ah. What a disappointment, Ive been wanting a good Hockey game for a while.

that's a shame. I figured a hockey game for Wii would be good.

Guess i'll just get NHL09 for PC and keep playing NHL Hitz on for gamecube on my wii

Lol.

And not @Rol, I feel sad for sports game devs having to port games down to the Wii -- it's honestly not that the Wii is a last-gen architecture resurrected, but rather that this generation's game engines are looking for a good 256MB main RAM and 256MB for the GPU.  Squeezing both the game and the models/textures/etc. into the 64/27MB the Wii h as is pretty hard to do, when you have to start from a much larger source.

Wii games look best when they're designed around the Wii in the first place.  If this game engine had been designed around the Wii architecture, and ported *up* to the HD consoles, it would look much better on the Wii, I guarantee, and it probably would look nearly the same on the HD consoles (the same as they look now, not "the same as the Wii" -- they would still be somewhat better, of course).

Also, adapting the controls to be Wii-friendly, when coming from a tried-and-true console gamepad perspective on sports games, is... hard.  Real hard, except perhaps in the case of baseball, where having two analog sticks isn't really necessary.  The gamepad style controller was invented after the mouse/pointing-device... and it *does* have a place in gaming.  It never would have survived if it didn't.

Will have to wait for the 360 and PS3 versions to compare but I doubt they will even be close to that.

Does it matter what reviewers says already? Wii owners eat this shit up anyway, since they never seen a hockey game on the Wii before, especially the canadians.

Anyway, its a good thing that Take 2 is experimenting with the Wii already, too bad EA was 10 steps ahead of them.

I would say that Wii owners buying a lotta hockey is not very likely.  To date, no pro-sports franchises have done very well on the Wii, despise its large install base.  Even the PS2 comes close, or does, outsell the Wii version in almost every case.

They missed a major opportunity to make playing goalie fun. Goalie is the most important player but doesn't get much love on the ice or in video games.

Well not high enough to issue a buy on my side unless I find it cheap later on. So I'll probably hold out for NHL 2k10 on the Wii considering that will have the inevetible Wii motion plus support.

Or do plan B - Rent it and not take someone else's word for it. =)

"Dont go in that room , all those women are butt ugly" - blind quadrapalegic