ESPN Presentation...

[ballsmag]

Let me say beforehand that I absolutely love the game for the gameplay, but the presentation leaves much to be desired.

Honestly, all thats really required is that those in charge of the presentation just watch an ESPN hockey broadcast. But I'll get into some specifics here.

First of all, it's a travesty that the producers on this game allowed programmers, or anyone that doesn't watch hockey, to have come up with the play-by-play script. How many times has Gary Thorne, or Bill Clement for that matter, EVER commented on how really great shoulder checks are (excepting after Scott Stevens concusses an opponent). I'm sure the programmers are proud as all heck that the play-by-play engine can tell the difference between a hip check and a shoulder check or a wrist shot and a slap shot, but fans sure don't. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, watch a game, listen to Thorne. He is a master, one of the best in the business. Let him dictate what the play-by-play is. It shouldn't need mentioning, but this game says otherwise; Gary Thorne knows play-by-play better than anyone at Visual Concepts. Period.

It's been said before by some on this forum, but the little ESPN logo flashes between replays and cut-scenes is excessive. As I watch a re-run of Ottawa/New Jersey game 5 from this past years playoffs, I have seen that screen exactly zero times. So that begs the question, who in the hell decided it should be in the video game (other than as a cheap hack to disguise the engine being too slow to load replays, perhaps?)

This is a minor quibble, but the lack of a camera zoom (or did I miss it somewhere?) makes it tough to run a power play using the normal 3/4 views, since you can't see the point. Maybe a button to zoom out, a la Madden NFL football to see receiver's routes, would help here.

Also, for a game that seems to pride itself on attention to details, there are some startling errors. In a game in which I was leading 10-1, the play-by-play went on to say it was a tie game. Powerplay chances are called as short-handed chances, and why the hell is every shot a wraparound chance? The pre-faceoff cut-scenes that show wingers jostling often (in fact, I can't recall it ever not happening) show the center lined up on the wing. Why?

Also, I noticed at least one player had the wrong jersey number, which I guess isn't that bad, but when you get in Ethan Moreau's lack of front teeth right, but get Alexei Semenov's number wrong (#3 is retired in Edmonton), you start to wonder.

The 3-star selection is also rather disappointing, rink announcers are usually a bit more animated announcing the home team's stars. Which reminds me, who the hell came up with the player celebrations? Nobody showboats like that anymore, not for a goal and especially not for a 3-star selection. Did somebody think they were working on a football game?

Anyways, the franchise obviously has a lot going for it, I just hope these (and a few other issues) can finally get sorted out next year.

[Spoonman]

Haha good points man. And good eye with that Semenov's number being wrong. I agree.
Thos ESPN flashes are annoying and jesus how many times to I have to hear about how great shoulder checks are! ya bill you really do hit em with power when you hit em with the shoulder.

[ChadyzGroove]

i think that if a home player scores a goal there should be some showboating, but other than that little to none should be done, and i agree with the annoucers,

[Modano9]

I would hope, and am certain, by now the developers are aware the repetive 'shoulder' remark and are going to fix it asap! You made a lot of other good points, too, such as the annoyance of the ESPN logo flashing every cut scene. The first game I played, and the first time I saw that I was like, "what tha **** is that?" And especially since I can only get time to play at night, with no other lights on the ESPN is quite blinding.

But I have another gripe: Any of you guys notice in Franchise Mode when you save settings (controller layout, gameplay settings, ect..) they are never really saved? I save them in a profile folder, yet the next time I play when I load the folder, the settings never appear. I am left still looking at the regular default settings! Please fix this.

And one more big gripe: I've played about 14 games in Hall of Famer, franchise mode (only won two so far, man this is the toughest hockey game ever) and I've only seen three--count'em, three--replays of a scoring chance! Do I have a defective disc? All of a sudden, I was playing my tenth game, and they showed a replay of Hlavac busting down the wing and narrowly missing a top-shelfer. I almost fell off my couch. And then last nigth I saw two more replays! What happened to all the replays?

And I keep reading one of the major issues with 2k3 was the "super goalies." That the goalies were super-human and 'unbeatable'. I didn't have any problems deking out the goalie last year, or scoring on a deflection or wrap-around, or even scoring on rebounds, but this year, with 2k4, oh-my-god. I've thrown everything including the kitchen sink at fourteen different goalies and maybe scored four of five goals, in 14 f'ing games! Wassup with that? 2k4 has the real super-goalies.

[SeanFranchise]

Maybe its the fact that I play with the hurricanes, but the goalies are too hard to beat. I'm playing on pro and I'll give the computer a few great saves, but come on, I generate my chances, and the goalie still stops it. They're too badass with the glove too...

[Layre]

I'd like to add my comments regarding the celebratory animations on a goal. So far, I can't ever remember a game (since up until now, I've always been an EA Sports fan) that had the right player animations when celebrating a goal.

It would seem that in some cases (especially when I get a hat trick) they're a bit too over-board. What happened with the simple raise arms and stick in air and simply skate on.

Some of the animations are good, when you have 1 goal and 2 assistants when they group and tag heads. That was good.

I must say, that I do like it when I've scored so many times, you can see that the celebration level goes down - on the first goal they're way excited and by the 8th goal, they seem to be like "yeah yeah yeah whatever".. That is cool - I hope it was intentional.

At anyrate, I would like to see the same celebratory animations that the players do from the games.

There is one part where I see all my players on the screen raise their arms up in the air and then put them down, then back up and back down. Looks like their doing some silly excersize rather than some celebration thing.

So in short - please, no big, over-the-top celebrations, just watch a game and do what the real players do.