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NHL FaceOff 2001 Review
Jon Lenaway
00/12/0000
Sony’s hockey beats EA to the shelves this year, and delivers quite a solid product.
As always, all of the updated rosters are in place along with the two new expansion teams: the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild. Several different world hockey clubs have also been included.
If youâre looking for arcade hockey or youâre into simulation games, FaceOff 2001 delivers both packages fairly well with all sorts of customizable options to tweak the game to your liking.
Gameplay
The controls may be a bit too simplistic. While this certainly makes it easier to pick up quickly and jump right into play, those of you looking for the depth in movement might be a bit disappointed. Your selection of moves includes mostly the basics of shooting, sprinting, passing, and checking. The analog control, however, gives you a lot of room to weave through players with great precision. Icon-based passing is still here, so you can pass the puck to exactly the player you had intended.
Overall, the skating looks and feels extremely smooth. This takes a little getting used to, but does not affect the play too much. On the easiest level of difficulty, it is extremely easy to score more than twelve goals in a game, but as you ramp up the skill level you should find it quite a bit more difficult to win by such a margin.
One feature that I have always liked in the FaceOff series is the ability to change the game play speed. If you find yourself looking for even a greater challenge, crank up the speed and try to keep up.
The menus are easy to use and clear. A small gripe is that after a season or tournament game, you have to go back to the main menu instead of just continuing on to the next game.
Graphics
FaceOff 2001 is one of the best-looking hockey games on the PlayStation. The skating and checking animations are very fluid and realistic. Each stadium looks more or less like their real world counterparts, and players even have their real faces when the camera zooms in after a goal. Even when you bump up the game speed, the frame rate stays smooth. While the visuals are nothing special compared to earlier versions of the game and especially to the hockey games weâre seeing on Dreamcast and PlayStation2, they do get the job done quite well. Your old PlayStation is running out of visual surprises, but you wonât really mind here since the game plays so solidly.
Sound
The sound really covers no new ground, and is pretty much like earlier versions of the game. Play-by-play and color commentary are well done, but as in any sports game the more you play the sicker you will get of it. In-game sound effects are realistic, but nothing that will sell you the game on their own. One of these years, I am still hoping to hear a check into the boards that will shake the house and scare off my cat. As a big fan of huge sound, one can dream.
Comments
If youâre not planning on stepping up to the PlayStation2 quite yet this fall and you need to play some hockey on your PlayStation, NFL FaceOff 2001 is a great choice. We have yet to see NHL 2001 from EA Sports, so we cannot yet tell you which is the better choice. We can say, however, that EA is looking at stiff competition for the PlayStation hockey crown
