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Playstation | Sports | NHL 2001 | Review

There is no Boxart for - NHL 2001
NHL 2001 6 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.5
  • SOUND: 4.0
  • CONTROL: 5.0
  • FUN FACTOR 5.0
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.5
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.5
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

Review: NHL 2001

Review by HUMANTORNADO | 11/24/2000 | 14:47:41 PM PST

Leaner, meaner, and cleaner sums up the way NHL 2001 skates onto the PlayStation for this new hockey season.

Leaner, meaner, and cleaner sums up the way NHL 2001 skates onto the PlayStation for this new hockey season.

Pre-season
You know right from the start that NHL 2001 is going to be very different. The game opens up with pre-rendered highlight clips instead of the usual video highlights from the previous hockey season. Once you get into the game menus, which are much easier to navigate and load incredibly fast, the difference becomes even more apparent.

You can pick from exhibition, season, playoff, shootout, and tournament games (with up to 16 teams and four rounds). There is a draft that lets you automatically or manually pick players, as well as sign free agents. Aside from the typical game options of turning offsides, icing, and two line passes on or off, you can adjust the game's overall speed with a slider bar. On the lowest speed setting, the game plays fast enough, but a slider bar lets you crank it up to inhuman speeds. Other slider bar adjusted options include penalties and fighting.

Got A Nice Rink To It
Hardcore fans will like the rink size option which lets you pick the large international spec rink size or smaller NHL rink size. You even have the option in Season mode of picking a World vs. North America or classic East vs. West matchup. NHL Challenge is a fun extra that you can toggle on or off as well. Challenge mode assigns you tasks like scoring a hat trick or laying down five "big hits" in a game. Meeting the challenge lets you unlock extra points for your custom created players.

Coaching strategies are excellent in NHL 2001, and you pick from a complete list of strategies for offense, power play, man-down, and forechecking. A Momentum factor, which is displayed in the scorebox during a game, can also be toggled on or off. The momentum factor plays a big role in real hockey, and including it as a selectable option makes perfect sense. Suffice it to say that NHL 2001 has a great set of options that will let any hockey nut customize the on-ice experience to a T.

On the ice, NHL 2001 shows some pep as well. The graphics have been cleaned up and the animations are linked together better. In addition, the frame rate has been given a kick. Overall, the game plays very smooth and fast, but the replays are very choppy. A good number of useful camera angles (as well as the important reverse angle) make NHL 2001 a pleasure to look at. Commentary is a little sparse, but that's a good thing, and the play-by-play keeps up with the action better than in years previous.

Cup Winner
EA's NHL 2001 keeps its lead over Sony's NHL FaceOff, but every year, that gap gets smaller. Still, NHL 2001 has better controls and coaching strategies, and the plethora of options rounds out this excellent hockey package. NHL 2001 takes this year's PlayStation Championship, but it was a tight seven game showdown.