NHL 07 (Xbox 360)

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.

Make no mistake, the learning curve for this control scheme is going to be high, even for longtime hockey game fans. You will almost certainly find yourself instinctively reaching for the usual shoot buttons, and you'll get exactly nowhere. Not to mention that the right trigger passing feels very weird at first (though that's because the passing in general just isn't as responsive as you might expect, and takes some practice to use effectively). However, in a deeply merciful move, the game's "classic" control scheme includes both face button passing and shooting, as well as the skill stick. So you can play around using the skill stick but can fall back on the buttons if you feel like it. Of course, after a while, the skill stick will become second nature, and you'll forget all about those face buttons.

Fantastic as the skill stick and general offense of NHL 07 is, the defense and goalies haven't quite kept up their end of the bargain. Playing defense is mostly how it's been for the last few EA NHL games, save for the cumbersome poke check mechanic that requires you to hold down the right bumper and poke around using the right control stick. Without the right bumper held down, you'll deliver checks with the right stick, just like in the last few games. Save for running around like a lunatic, diving and checking into any opponent with the puck, there's just not much strategy to the defense beyond some basic defensive pressure settings. Computer-controlled defenders do a decent job of blocking your path to the net, though they also feel robotic and don't employ much varying strategy when defending against you.

Goalies are mostly very competent, but you'll see some real head-scratcher goals as you play.

Goalies generally look and move better than they ever have in an EA hockey game, but they still give up a decent number of dumb, dumb goals. Pucks will bounce off masks, shoulders, gloves, and just about any other part of a goalie's body, creating some silly goals in the process. There are also still issues with players shooting right through goalies when you're up close and personal in the crease and the game decides you're going to score a goal, not to mention goals that ought not be. We had one situation in which the goalie went prone on his back to stop a goal from sliding into the net, and it looked like he succeeded, except that our controlled offensive player took a swipe with a wrister practically inside the net, and the lamp lit. Upon further review, the replay showed the goalie hopping on top of the puck before it ever hit the net, but the puck somehow squeezed out of his back as our stick clipped through the prone goalie. Additionally, unlike in 2K Sports' NHL series, which has found a way to make goalie controls fun via its crease control system, playing goalie in 07 is no fun at all--not that that's exactly surprising.

Fortunately, the joy of using the skill stick makes up for most of the game's defensive shortcomings, though those aren't the only things it has to make up for. The Xbox 360 version of NHL 07 is also missing a lot of the secondary game modes that have been in the series for the last several years, leaving you with a skeletal franchise mode and unremarkable online play. There are world tournament and shootout modes available, but the world tournament mode is the same one we've been playing for the last few years, and shootout mode is exactly what it sounds like: a quick and dirty shootout, and nothing more.

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