The story certainly strays wide of any substance, though it’s admirable enough to keep you interested throughout. Told via three distinct methods – CGI, in-game and animated cutscenes – Dante’s Inferno tells the story of Dante and his journey through Hell to rescue Beatrice, the love of his life. She made a dumbfounded wager with the Devil that if Dante remained faithful to her he would return home from the Third Crusade unharmed. Of course, it’s never a good idea to deal with the Devil and Dante eventually succumbs to temptation, unknowingly condemning Beatrice to the underworld for all eternity. It’s certainly an interesting premise, and while the small cast of characters are fairly bland, the use of CGI and animation to tell the story is impressive and serviceable enough to complement the gameplay and provide a good enough reason for venturing through the Nine Circles of Hell.

Of course it’s within those Circles that the bulk of the action takes place. Dante’s Inferno is, to put it lightly, a God of War copycat. From the use of light and heavy attacks, the fixed camera angles; the way you open doors, health and magic viles; the crate and lever puzzles and the QTEs to finish off enemies. The list could go on and on but I think you get the point. Sure, it’s derivative, but that doesn’t stop it being fun. Armed with Death’s own scythe and a Holy Cross, Dante’s certainly equipped to deal with any of Hell’s deadly minions. Combat starts out fairly basic with the scythe used for light and heavy combo attacks, and the Holy Cross as a useful ranged weapon, but eventually you’ll kill enough enemies to earn souls and upgrade both pieces of equipment to add an element of depth and variety to proceedings.

It’s here that Dante’s Inferno adopts some originality with holy and unholy upgrade trees. Whenever you grab an enemy for a brutal finishing move you can decide to either punish or absolve them, earning unholy or holy souls. These souls will open up more and more powerful abilities for you to buy for the scythe (unholy) and Holy Cross (holy) so choosing whether to punish or absolve an enemy carries a degree of strategy depending on what area you want to improve upon. As you reach the higher levels you’ll be able to purchase and utilise a variety of devastating moves for your two weapons and magic attacks, so there’s a lot of freedom to the combat allowing you to pick and choose which moves suit you. Combine this with different augmentations that give bonuses to particular areas and Dante’s Inferno has a case for stating its own identity.

It’s still very much derived from the God of War franchise with familiar and unoriginal combat; however, combining all of the light and heavy attacks with the Holy Cross and magic is wholly satisfying and stops combat from ever seeping into repetition. Plus, Dante’s Inferno has a unique setting and character designs going for it as well. Your descent into Hell will be a frightening one as you pass through each of the Nine Circles: limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery. It’d be easy to fill each Circle with rivers of lava and molten rock, but Dante’s Inferno goes for a much more gruesome look, spectacularly earning its mature rating. Death is all around, whether it’s the terrified screams of lost souls falling from above, or even the architecture itself; often moulded from the limbs and vital organs of the deceased. Everything about it signifies our worst nightmares, and as you venture deeper and deeper the environments will begin to represent each stage of the Nine Circles. Lust is full of phallic shaped towers and other such imagery, while gluttony sees you travel through the fleshy innards of a giant creature, eventually appearing out of its mouth. Even the enemy designs follow a similar pattern, with the controversial unbaptised babies waiting in limbo and bulbous, vile creatures eating anything that moves in gluttony. They’re fantastically grotesque and a joy to rip apart with your scythe.

Sadly these brilliant designs don’t far outstretch the first three Circles. While everything at the beginning of the game is new and exciting, enemies are eventually rehashed in each subsequent Circle. The only new enemy types you have to look forward to are mages and a couple of the other enemies re-branded, and it doesn’t make much sense that creatures seemingly specific to gluttony will appear in violence later on. It’s a shame because the few enemies you are introduced to are great, but you end up fighting them throughout the majority of Dante’s Inferno’s seven hour playtime. Even the level design carries a similar fate. There are a few standout moments past the first three Circles, but that initial grandiose scale is lost as you’re shuffled from room to room, forced to fight respawning enemies till the exit door opens. The only thing in-between these rooms are simple crate and lever puzzles and some light platforming. The sense of exploration and awe from your first few hours in Hell eventually fade away as the level design turns to tedium, culminating in fraud (the 8th Circle) where you’re forced into ten identical challenge rooms before you can face off against the last boss. They’re monotonous, frustrating and disrupt any excitement that could have been built before the grand finale; ultimately reeking of lazy level design.

Dante’s Inferno starts off big, consistently introducing new enemy types and grand environments, but by the end of the game that initial excitement turns to repetition as you fight through wave after wave of the same enemy type in increasingly familiar territory. The core gameplay is enjoyable enough to keep it interesting and fun throughout, with myriad upgrades and a unique punish and absorb mechanic to sink your teeth into, so it’s a shame the rest of the game couldn’t keep the momentum going. It might not be original but if you’ve never owned a Sony system before, Dante’s Inferno is an enjoyable alternative to Kratos’ Greek adventures, though the rest of us may want to wait until March.

Commander Shepard is back once again for the second chapter in this sci-fi trilogy. Mass Effect 2 is the predictable darker chapter, shifting focus away from the Alliance and the Council and focusing on the seedier side of the Galaxy and the characters that inhabit it. These are much more dire circumstances for Shepard and his crew, and the characters you’re forced to work for carry an air of mystery around their motives and why they need your help. It’s a fantastic new look at this universe, expanding out to the far reaches of the Galaxy and dealing with the underbelly of society whilst still retaining the series’ own personality. The narrative moves thick and fast with some excellent pacing, despite the fact you can always branch off for side quests and character-building missions. This is a phenomenal, gut-wrenching story and you can choose to play it however you want, whether it’s the poster boy Paragon, the no-nonsense Renegade or a mixture of the two. Your actions and the choices you make can affect the story in unimaginable ways come the final chapter, so there’s real weight to everything you do. It’s a completely engrossing tale from beginning to end, backed by fantastic writing and an amazingly strong cast of characters.
And it’s your relationships and interactions with these characters that make Mass Effect 2’s story as good as it is. The majority of your playtime will be spent recruiting a mix of deep, invigorating characters for your crew, and then earning and balancing their loyalty. They come from all races, all sexes, and each one is unique, interesting and just a joy to talk to. They’re completely fleshed out people with ever expanding back stories and motives, from “perfect woman” Miranda, to the quick-talking Mordin and the feisty Jack; each character is wholly memorable. On the surface they may seem like a stereotypical group, but delve deeper and you’ll reveal whole new facets to their personalities, their upbringing and the heart wrenching tragedies that inhabit their complicated lives. It’s such a diverse group, doubling the cast seen in the original Mass Effect whilst also upping the quality tenfold. Even Shepard has become much more of a character rather than just a vessel for the player. You’re always in control of his dialogue but he now reveals more and more character traits to provide the same depth and intricacies as everyone else.
Even minor characters are given a similar amount of time and effort. Familiar characters will return from the original Mass Effect, however large or small their role and whether or not they survived the first time out. Of course this may all depend on the player if you choose to import your Shepard from the first game. This much touted feature allows you to access a Mass Effect save and import it to Mass Effect 2, carrying with it all the choices you made in the first game. Did you save Wrex on Virmire? If so, he’ll make an appearance in Mass Effect 2. Who survived, Kaiden or Ashley? Your choices will have an effect on who shows up in the sequel. Minor characters you might have saved along the way will surprisingly reappear here, showing their gratitude; there are even hints at things to come in Mass Effect 3 as a result of what you did in the first game. Your decisions might not have as big an effect as expected, but seeing returning characters and the minor impact your choices have made is a bonus layer on an already phenomenal universe. If you don’t import your character these choices will be chosen for you, but they’ll never have the same emotional impact knowing that these events happened because of what you did in a game now two years old.

Of course, Bioware’s pedigree for storytelling was always a certainty to appear in Mass Effect 2, so those two years were spent improving every aspect of Mass Effect’s gameplay that couldn’t quite live up the quality we’ve come to expect from this RPG powerhouse. Although, interestingly enough, Mass Effect 2 has taken an unprecedented shift into shooter territory, streamlining the RPG elements into a much more accessible package. Gone is the convoluted inventory management, replaced with, well, nothing. Rather than looting new guns, armour and ammo types, you’ll find one or two of each weapon type, from assault rifles and snipers to submachine guns and the new heavy weapons. There are no stats displaying weapon damage, cooldown time, or anything like that; instead, each new weapon sees an improvement on the last – and can be used by all party members – and the different ammo types must be used to damage particular enemy shields and armour if you choose a class adept at using weaponry. If not, then you’ll probably favour the tech and biotic powers. All of these powers and ammo types will fall under your own characters four-tier skill tree, allowing you to improve upon their effectiveness. You’ll only have around four or five different powers to upgrade, so it’s a much more streamlined system to the one seen in the original Mass Effect, which revolved around twelve or thirteen powers for each character in your party.
You’ll still have full control over your party in Mass Effect 2, and the best thing about combat comes from combining all of your powers together to take down your foes. The combat movement has been much improved from the first game, replacing the clunky cover system with a one-button alternative that makes snapping to cover a breeze. Just moving around the battlefield is a much more intuitive and enjoyable experience, and everything about the shooting and your powers is tight and satisfying. You can still pause the action at anytime and use the wheel to dish out commands to your party members, but this time around it’s much easier to assign powers to the d-pad and keep the action flowing. You don’t have to, but it’s another improvement to the combat that elevates Mass Effect 2 to the top of the totem pole, competing with the best cover-based shooters on offer. At times it may feel like a Gears of War clone, but the tactics you can utilize with your squad and powers provides Mass Effect 2 with its own identity. The higher difficulties will definitely require more cohesion within your squad, and utilizing each person’s powers is the key to success. Different enemies will use different shields and barriers, and each power has an effectiveness towards each one, as well as the different ammo types. Combining powers together and easily moving your party around the battlefield is a joy unmatched by many dedicated shooters, let alone a story-driven RPG of this magnitude.
Even the side quests have seen a vast improvement. Thankfully the dreaded Mako is nowhere to be seen. Instead you’ll scan planets from orbit, the Normandy’s AI alerting you if there are any side quests (aka anomaly’s) on the surface. Once you’ve found one you’ll be dropped down directly to the location of the quest, ready for action. No more messing about with horrible vehicle controls and identical planets; each planet and side quest has a unique identity. Most will revolve around stopping a group of mercenaries or out-of-control droids, whilst others are a little more inventive, guiding you through a thick fog with markers or tasking you with navigating a wrecked ship, balancing on the edge of a cliff. They shake up the fundamentals for a brief period and are worth seeking out. Though if you do explore the Galaxy without finding any side quests, you can always scan for useful minerals instead. You can orbit pretty much every planet you find on the Galaxy Map, and the scanner will let you know how dense the mineral population is on each planet. Scanning itself isn’t the most exciting mini-game and it can get very repetitive, but it beats using the Mako. You just move a cursor across the planet’s surface, using vibrations to find various minerals that can be used to upgrade equipment you’ll find throughout your playtime. The majority of these upgrades apply to your whole party, much like the weapons, and can range from anything from specific weapon damage and accuracy to increasing the cooldown on biotic powers and even enhancing the shields and weapons on the Normandy. Other upgrades will apply to certain party members, so you can deck out your party and make them as powerful as possible.
To access these upgrades you’ll need to visit the tech lab aboard the brand new Normandy. In Mass Effect 2 it works as a HUB world for all your interstellar activity. As well as talking to all of your crew members you’ll also be able to explore its four levels, using the armoury to outfit your party and the captain’s quarters to customise your own armour. The armour of your party never changes, so you can only alter it for Shepard. A lot of it is just cosmetic, changing the colour and design on your suit, but you can also outfit specific parts to increase your health and other attributes in particular areas. The rest of your party’s armour and health is covered in the mineral and tech lab upgrades. It’s just another, simple way of covering all your bases in one move whilst also being able to customise your Shepard in a more personal way.

Visually Mass Effect 2 looks the part. The graphics are an obvious improvement on the originals and the 1970s sci-fi aesthetic is in full effect, complete with complementary film grain. Most importantly the technical hiccups that hampered the first game have been completely eradicated as well. The framerate is smooth as you like, even in large firefights; the poor texture load-in is gone and there’s only one elevator in sight – and you don’t even have to ride it. Everything that was ever frustrating in Mass Effect has been ironed out in the sequel to substantially improve upon the presentation. Bioware even went ahead and hired a plethora of top-quality voice actors to portray their exceptional characters. Martin Sheen is the pick of the bunch, but everyone turns in extremely well delivered dialogue to bring this cast to life. The synth-inspired soundtrack remains, and the sound design is fantastic, whether you’re just opening a door on the Normandy or a deafening rocket is exploding just meters away.
Some may argue that Mass Effect 2 is dumbing down on its RPG elements for the masses, but it makes it a far better game over the long haul. The combat can easily compete with the best in a crowded shooter market, and the powers and tactics available elevate it to the top. The un-wieldy RPG mechanics have been stripped down for a much more accessible experience, allowing you to forget about sitting in dull menus and concentrate on the action. The fabulous storytelling, innovative dialogue system and impact of your choices remains in full force, and that’s all you really need to make a great RPG: the actual role-playing. The commitment from Bioware in making this franchise the best it can be is astounding. With the praise the original received it would be easy to release more of the same, but they listened to the community and extensively improved on all of Mass Effect’s faults and even refined and bettered the elements that were so amazing to begin with. Mass Effect 3 can’t come soon enough.

Just like Most Wanted the story is told via cut scenes featuring real-life actors performing on CGI backgrounds. You’re guided through the game by Hollywood star Maggie Q, who will inform you of your next objectives, and generally just move the narrative along. Undercover sets out its own style with both the look and the acting, but most of the time both fall flat. It tries to use the cheesiness of it all to its advantage, but the majority of the time it’s just laughable. There’s not really much to care about here.

And of course the aforementioned objectives don’t really matter either since you’ll spend most of the game completing the same race types over and over. You have the basic races against other drivers where you have to reach a certain target; Outrun and Highway Battle have you racing against one other opponent, trying to get ahead of them and stay there; as well as other specific mission types that vary as the game progresses.

The basic races are the most disappointing of all. You see, Undercover is set in a massive open-world, so you would imagine you can go anywhere and make your way to the finish line any way you want, but instead you’re confined to one set path, constrained by barriers at the side of the road. When you factor in the fact that you can access all races from the d-pad, the open-world setting makes very little sense. There isn’t even anything extra to unlock if you go exploring, so it’s a wasted opportunity and one that’s pointless in the context of the game.

Undercover is also incredibly easy as well. Even if your car is moderately worse than the rest of the pack, you’ll breeze to the win with little resistance. It’s clearly aimed at a casual audience, and it shows. However, once you reach the half way point of the game, it spikes in difficulty and opponents become increasingly resilient and aggressive. It’s quite a large jump from what was before it, so it can take you by surprise. With an improved learning curve Undercover would be much more enjoyable and a lot less frustrating.

But, like before, the best part of Undercover are the police chases. They aren’t as spontaneous as before (featuring under their own event) and, like the rest of the game, they do take a while to get going because of the difficulty; but eventually they’re just as intense and exhilarating as before, with each cop attempting to spin you round, or box you in. At it’s hardest – with a helicopter flying above, and tons of cars behind – it’s a lot of fun, and is the definite bright spark in Undercover.

Sadly it’s let down by a horrendous framerate – at times it seems better suited to Microsoft Excel than the 360. It will often chug along, especially when there are a lot of cars on screen, so that initial intensity from police chases are dampened as the framerate tries to keep up. It’s hugely disappointing when you consider Undercover’s main rival, Burnout: Paradise, keeps going at a steady 60FPS throughout.

It’s also strange when you consider that the visuals aren’t particularly polished either. Sure, the huge roster of cars look great, with all the level of detail and shine you would expect; but the rest of the open-world city is full of low-res textures and bland scenery. Some of the locales are fun to drive through, but mostly the city is pretty lifeless, with very few cars on the road during races. There are also some aliasing issues, and some shadows like to move across the road at speed depending on how fast you’re going. A bizarre effect.

Sound, on the other hand, is excellent. All of the cars sound lifelike, and believable, especially the screeching of the tires as you drift round a sharp bend; and the soundtrack is top-notch, blending a plethora of different musical genres together so that there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Special mention must also go to the police chatter over the radio, a nice, and sometimes hilarious, touch.

Online, Undercover features races against other opponent as well as a new mode called Cops ‘n’ Robbers. Here you’re split into two teams, the robbers needing to get and take a package to a location in the city, whilst the other team of cops need to stop them. It’s a fun mode that will keep you busy for a good while, especially with friends. The advantage obviously goes to the robbers, but it strikes a nice balance and provides a lot of entertainment while it lasts.

Need For Speed: Undercover is a disappointing title. It doesn’t build on the series in any way, basically sticking to Most Wanted’s fundamentals, whilst adding more technical issues. It has its moments, and the cop chases are a unique feature of the series that should attract the fans; but at the moment there are other racers that do things better, especially when it comes to taking advantage of the open-world setting and using it in a dynamic way to fulfil the games potential.

You take on the role of Isaac Clarke, an engineer sent out with his crew to answer a distress call from the massive deep space mining ship, the USG Ishimura. They think they’re being sent to fix a routine mechanical failure, but it’s never that simple. Upon arriving they find the crew dead with the majority turned into alien life forms known as Necromorphs. Dead Space takes a lot of influences from classic horror movies such as John Carpenter’s The Thing, Event Horizon andAlien, and this is none more obvious than with the Necromorphs. They still maintain some of their human features, but they’re vile creatures that manage to get even more grotesque as the game goes on. The designs are outlandish and highly inventive which just makes it a lot more enjoyable to blow them up. They come in all shapes and sizes and you’ll need to adapt different strategies to defeat each one. It manages to keep you on your toes as you never know what kind of foe you’ll be dealing with next.

The Necromorphs are also a lot harder to kill than your average enemy. They cannot be killed by conventional methods, so headshots are out of the question; instead you’ll need to resort to using Strategic Dismemberment. This is the process of incapacitating enemies by shooting off their limbs or alien tentacles. Each enemy has a different area to attack so you’ll need to differentiate your methods for each fight. The starting enemies can be taken down by shooting off their legs to drop them to the floor, and then finishing them off from there; whilst others will require a lot more thought, but I won’t spoil that here.

Strategic Dismemberment is what separates Dead Space from other shooters and gives it an identity of its own. It’s an excellent gameplay mechanic that changes the way you’re used to playing, especially in regards to the usual headshot dynamic we’ve become accustomed to over the years with survival horrors.

Of course it’s difficult for Isaac to get his hands on conventional weaponry anyway. Being an engineer as part of a deep space mining operation he has access to many powerful mining tools; these can cut through solid rock, so using them on flesh would be the logical thing to do. There are plenty to chose from, each coming with a secondary fire option. You’ll spend most of your time with the default weapon, but it’s perhaps the most effective. The secondary fire lets you switch between vertical and horizontal shooting, and using the two is essential for most of the enemies.

To pack a much bigger punch you can also upgrade your weapons at one of the many work bench’s spread around the Ishimura. You’ll find power nodes around the ship and then the work bench lets you apply it to different categories such as damage, capacity and reload speed. You can also upgrade your suit and stasis and kinesis modules. Stasis lets you slowdown objects and enemies for a short amount of time, proving handy when dealing with foes or environmental puzzles and kinesis is very similar, allowing you to pick up objects instead.

You’ll want to upgrade your suit to take less damage, but also to give Isaac more air time. There are many points in Dead Space where you’ll need to venture out onto the hull of the ship, giving Isaac a short amount of time before he suffocates. These section speed up the game, and can get pretty frantic when dealing with enemies and floating debris, although it doesn’t quite compare to the excellent zero gravity sections. Here you’ll need to jump around the environment to reach your goal, whilst the Necromorph will also float after you. It shakes the usual gameplay up a bit, and it’s amazing to look at. You’ll see drops of blood floating in the atmosphere along with decapitated heads and other human limbs. Just trying to figure out a path up along the ceiling and walls is a puzzle within itself.

Dead Space is a stunning game to look at, the lighting and shadow effects are phenomenal, adding to the creepy and tense atmosphere aboard the ship. There are some aliasing issues with shadows on Isaac’s suit, but it’s not noticeable enough to detract from the experience, and the rest of the ship is superbly lit with ominous shadows that will keep you guessing what’s up ahead. Some sections of the Ishimura – especially those with views out into space – are simply awe inspiring, and it really catches that sense of claustrophobia even though it‘s huge.Dead Space may not get the recognition it deserves because of the vast amount of top quality games being released at the moment, but it’s definitely one of the best looking games ever seen.

Saying that, the audio manages to surpass even the stunning visuals. Necromorphs will move around the ship via vents and the sound does a brilliant job of freaking you out as you hear them rustling all around, never knowing where they’re going to pop out; they’re shrieking cries adding to the freight. However, the stand out moments comes when you’re outside the ship, as sound becomes muffled as if you were under water. Isaac’s yells echo within his suit, and enemies are almost inaudible. It adds a new dimension as you can barely hear what’s around you until it’s right behind you ready to rip its claws into your back; now we know what Alien was on about.

Put simply, Dead Space has production values out of this world. Everything comes together to create a cohesive experience that can match up to any of the best survival horrors of recent years.

It does, however, have its bad points. They’re few and far between, but they are there. One of the main gripes is with the amount of backtracking you’re forced to do. It makes sense in the context of the story, but with a ship as big as the Ishimura you would expect to visit brand new locations on every mission. It doesn’t hinder the experience too much, especially when there’s a handy navigation tool to help you out, but it can get a little tiresome. And the same can be said for the combat. It’s a great system, but after a while it does get a little repetitive. New enemies keep things fresh but there aren’t too many of those either. But of course it is the beginning of a new franchise, so we can expect more and more of this universe to be explored in the future.

And Dead Space isn’t a bad way to start a new IP. It creates a creepy, disturbing atmosphere that is often unnerving, and combines that with a deep and engaging combat system that is simply one of a kind. Dead Space may have floated under your radar, but it should be in plain sight by now; it’s one of the best survival horrors in years and looks set to become a prominent figure in video gaming in the years to come.

My first experience with Sonic was in 1992. Now, seventeen years later, I look at what the Sonic franchise has become and I am disappointed. Once a distinct character, Sonic has been reduced to a supporting actor in the Nintendo universe (the most fun I’ve had playing as Sonic in the past five years was when I played Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games). Clearly, the Sonic series hasn’t aged well. I wondered, then, if there was a series from my childhood that has done so. Is there a game series that is known for quality gameplay, consistent innovation, and meaningful impact in popular culture? I answer yes: the NHL series of video games by Electronic Arts. Because of these factors, it is the best video-game series of all time.

NHL then...

The previous statement may offend some videogame purists. They’ll point to the fact that Super Mario Bros. saved the industry after the great video game crash of 1983. They’ll point to the emotional storytelling of Final Fantasy VII. They’ll point to the epic scale of The Legend of Zelda series. They’ll even point to Madden NFL and claim that it’s a better sports series. Those purists are wrong.

If they claim that Super Mario Bros. is the best series, they need to accept that SMB2 was a re-skin of Doki Doki Panic and that the series’ offering for the GameCube, Super Mario Sunshine, was a letdown and certainly not a classic. If they claim that Final Fantasy represents the ultimate in video game series, they haven’t played a Final Fantasy game since 2002. If they want to claim that Zelda is the best series, they’ll be ignoring the CD-I system (maybe that’s for the best), the fact that there was no reason to make two Oracle games, and that there has been no proper Wii game in the series. If they claim Madden is a better sports series, then they skipped the 2006 through 2009 iterations and think that the newest generation of video game systems started yesterday.

So this leaves us with the NHL series. My first criterion for a great series is that it always offers quality game play. Here, the NHL series delivers in spades. From its humble days as NHLPA Hockey ’93 on the Sega Genesis, the NHL series offered a degree of realism not seen in sports games of the time. It translated the fast paced nature of the game of hockey to the home console. While the graphics are nothing to look at now, back then they represented quality never before seen. Everything was included in these early games: lightning-quick slap shots, punishing body-checks, and crisp passes. In the later days, as the series grew and added more features, the core gameplay always remained true to the sport that inspired it.

...and now

But a tradition of quality gameplay isn’t enough, which leads to the next criterion: innovation. It is here that the NHL series comes up in spades. NHLPA Hockey ’93 was the first game in the series that obtained a license from the player’s association to use actual player names in the game. This importance of this acquisition cannot be stated enough. Instead of scoring with Center #27, the game showed that you scored with Jeremy Roenick. The NHL series acquired such a license two years before the Madden NFL series, which did so in Madden NFL ’95. Another such innovation was the introduction of the skill stick in NHL 07. This feature mapped the hockey stick to the right analog stick and provided for fluid gameplay. Performing dekes, an essential part of hockey, used to be next to impossible. Now, they could be done in a life-like manner. Finally, NHL 09 introduced Be A Pro mode, which lets the player control one player throughout the entire game. This immersive experience could be used in a franchise-mode-style of play or online, where you could play with eleven additional players. These innovations are characteristic of the NHL series of games.

Gameplay and innovation, while important, don’t make a series the best. Those two elements when combined with a strong impact on popular culture do. Everyone recognizes the theme song from Super Mario Bros. and they know where it’s from, even if they know nothing about video games. Did the NHL series make that impact? An examination of the evidence proves that it certainly did. In a 1994 Sports Illustrated article entitled “Hot Not”, E.M. Swift writes about the NHL’s increasing popularity over the NBA (look how long that lasted). One reason for this popularity was the NHL series of video games. Swift quotes EA’s VP of spoils marketing, Don Transeth, “It’s big in England. It’s huge on campuses. And a lot of these people are learning hockey through the video game.” The NHL was able to expand its reach through the NHL series of video games. Additionally, who can forget this classic scene in the 1996 film Swingers with Vince Vaughn, Patrick Van Horn, and Jon Favreau? (NSFW)

In conclusion, the NHL series is the best videogame series ever. It’s consistent- a quality game is released every year. It’s innovative- many of the game’s features have set the standard for sports games. It’s had a meaningful impact outside of video game culture- just look at Swingers. While many purists will be busy enjoying their classics, I’ll be sitting on the couch, plugging in my old Genesis, and firing up my copy of NHLPA Hockey ’93. It’s time to make Wayne’s head bleed.