Tuesday, April 8, 2008

National Hockey League 2008: A plea to a gaming giant.

There's nothing more rewarding to a sports gamer like myself than to get thoroughly involved and dedicated to a team or season in your favourite sports game and see them through years and years of development.

A few weeks after I picked up NHL 08, I was through my first season with my leaf squad (who now includes Mike Cammelleri AND Jay Bouwmeester for all you hockey fans) when I go to check the "Players who retired" message in the stupid EA Messages thing. I was surprised to find that well over 80 players had retired from the league. Including players like Martin Brodeur and Daniel Alfredsson who are in their mid 30's and enjoying prime seasons!

For those of you not familiar with Hockey this is basically like having Derek Jeter or Tim Duncan retiring at the end of your MLB or NBA seasons.

This was one of the regular 90 problems I end up having with Hockey video games. Others include: Why did they remove the Fantasy Draft option? and Why can't I edit a players attributes like in the 2k series? WHY?

Seriously EA Sports, do you test these things? And if you do, does this person know anything about the sport they're playing?

Here is something that I honestly want to do so badly that I would make serious personal sacrifices to do it: I want to work with the EA team that develops the NHL series and help them create a complete, realistic, yet fun experience for hockey fans. It is my belief that they have not achieved this since NHL 2001 for the PC or NHL 95 for the Sega Genesis. Mainly I'm talking the menus, the GM features, the way the create-a-team and players systems work and trading and signing free agents.

EA SPORTS, I CAN HELP YOU, SERIOUSLY.

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