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Video game critics give ‘NHL 2K11' middling reviews

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As excited as many people are for the opportunity to veg out today, my guess is a lot of hockey fans are eagerly awaiting midnight. That’s because game stores (might) be open for midnight sales, which means that video game enthusiasts and puckheads alike will gain their first chance to purchase NHL ’11 (and the same probably goes for EA Sports’ Wii-specific debut title, NHL Slapshot).

So if you’re EA Sports’ competition 2K Sports, today is your last day in the sun as the first hockey video game to be released in honor of the 2010-11 season. Since I lack a Nintendo Wii, I thought I’d take a look at what game critics are saying about NHL 2K11.

Metacritic.com gathers six game reviews of the title, giving it a composite score of 64 out of 100 “mixed or average reviews” using whatever formula that Web site employs.

IGN.com gives it a “passable” rating of 6.5 out of 10.

NHL 2K11 had a lot of potential, a notion that’s accentuated once you feel the one-to-one dekeing for the first time. Sadly once you spend some time with the title you’ll realize that the shooting mechanics and AI could’ve really used some fine tuning to avoid some of the needless frustrations. If you’re a diehard hockey fan I think there will be enough for you to enjoy to warrant a look, but I’d recommend picking up a Classic Controller for maximum enjoyment.

Gamespot gave it a mediocre score of 5.5 out of 10, the harshest of all reviews for the title.

It’s actually pretty odd that NHL 2K11 turned out so mediocre. 2K Sports dumped the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game to focus solely on the Wii edition this year, so you might think that the game would be better, not markedly worse and loaded down with a lot of outdated data. Regardless of the reasons behind this year’s problems, 2K is going to have to go back to the dressing room for next year’s Wii game and work on making the motion controls more responsive.

Cheat Code Central gave it a 3.7 out of 5 overall. Here’s an excerpt from their review.

Those looking for a truly realistic and user-friendly experience, one where players intuitively move their hands like they’re playing hockey and the on-screen players move along, won’t be happy. MotionPlus does not make this game any simpler or easier to learn. Hockey, when played with any degree of seriousness, simply requires too many different moves, and even a souped-up Wii controller can’t detect them all by motion alone. So, if you want to go with MotionPlus (you can still use the Classic Controller or an unmodified Wii-mote), you’re forced to learn a fairly complicated system. A decent tutorial is provided, and we highly recommend it.

So there you have it. Some called it more of a retread or a missed opportunity while others found it underwhelming overall. To give you perspective, NHL ’10 earned a metacritic score of 88 out of 100 on both Playstation 3 and X-Box 360. The 2K series was competitive during the PS2-era but hasn’t matched the innovation provided by EA Sports. Will a year off give them a chance to catch up? From the looks of the Nintendo Wii-only version’s reviews, they’ll need it.