It's that time of year again already. The World Series of baseball has wrapped up with the last bits of summer falling away with the leaves, the warriors of football have strapped on their helmets and re-entered the grid iron, and the surest sign of all that winter is approaching, other than the fact that it's sixteen degrees Fahrenheit right now, is that the stars of hockey are already out on the ice. With the hockey season in full motion, I've been getting that craving to fire up a game of hockey myself, but since I can't skate or play hockey, I'll stick to the home console version and see what we've got to look at.
Midway presents its latest iteration of the NHL Hitz franchise with NHL Hitz Pro. This year's version boasts deeper gameplay and functionality by sporting two personalities: an arcade style and a simulation style. It's quite rare for sports titles to have such lofty goals with two radically different formulas for gameplay. Most of what separates arcade sports titles from simulation style games is the game engines. While it's not likely that Midway went as far as to write two separate engines for their hockey game, let's not put it past them that they were able to assemble an engine capable of providing two very solid styles of hockey inside one game. Whether or not both sides of NHL Hitz Pro are on par with what they are supposed to provide is a very important question that has been approached subjectively both from a gameplay and fun-factor perspective and from a realism point of view. After many hours of playing Hitz Pro, I'm going to start from the beginning of my experience to answer several key questions.

From the moment I pulled the game out of its box and placed it on the disc tray, I will be forthright in admitting my skepticism toward Midway's claims of adding more simulation style gameplay to their sports titles. I had some of the same aspirations about MLB Slugfest 20-04, which isn't a bad baseball game by any stretch. What's hard to see is an arcade sports engine that can produce a quality simulation style of game. Enough about the game engine for now, let's proceed with the beginning.

The first thing I noticed about NHL Hitz Pro is the load time. A few screens of logos and text appear, the game tries to read my memory card for previous save data, and then the intro video plays. With any sports title that is ported from the Playstation 2 to other platforms, we inevitably run into porting issues such as load times. Once the game loads and the video plays, though, we're good to go. The intro video is as exciting as sports reels can be, and the video quality is not bad. The good thing in NHL Hitz Pro is the simplicity of the menus and the design of the menu screen. It's not as hazardous to traverse as some of the other menu layouts I've recently seen. In fact, this is one of the best layouts I've encountered.

My initial feeling toward the game was actually pretty high. The first thing that caught my eye was the Hockey School. I'm actually pretty fresh to the game of hockey. Where I'm originally from, there are three main sports: football, baseball, and basketball. Everything else was a minor sport. When I moved to Seattle, though, that changed. Several of my friends are into hockey like bees are to flowers, which is why I was interested in going head-to-head with NHL Hitz Pro. What I found in the Hockey School is something that ultimately made me smile. Everything a fan would ever want to know about the plays that go on in hockey is right there in the school, and on top of that it's taught by the all-time winningest coach in NHL history, Scotty Bowman! There is a list of lessons for the player to choose from, and if they are attempted in succession, each lesson actually builds upon the ones before it until eventually the player will have learned every control that is available to them. This is by far the best solution I've seen for learning the controls, and at the same time learning the ins and outs of hockey. I walked away having passed the courses feeling like I knew the game of hockey, which really opened the game up for me. Each lesson is accompanied by dialogue from the instructor and video of different hockey stars from the NHL, which takes this connection with the video game to a level that is on par with the actual sport - it may have actually gotten me into the sport as a fan. I found this to be something that kind of went in line with the game's presentation more than anything else because of its instructional value. For all of the information stored in the manual, I'm one of those gamers that never dig the manual out of the case until after I'm struggling in the game.

With my newfound confidence, I immediately jumped straight into a game situation to test my new skills against the competition. I promptly fired up a game as the Canucks, the team I'm most partial to, and hit the ice against the New York Rangers. The gameplay is something I found to be very versatile. I played the first game in Pro mode, which gave me a slower form of hockey than I was accustomed to. I got used to the flow of the game and found that I couldn't run around freely smashing everything in an attempt to get the puck, but I also liked the fact that I couldn't do just whatever came to mind. I've always been more in favor of having some rules and regulations involved. In Hitz mode, everything is faster. It's screaming havoc on ice, which is great especially in multiplayer games. The rules of the game don't apply nearly as much and the strategy becomes less of a factor while button mashing and controller skills become the law of the land.

The thing that I like about NHL Hitz Pro that sets it apart from Slugfest and most arcade titles of that variety are the stats. Sports simulation fans (like me) are also stat freaks in most cases, and I love a sports game that tracks just about every kind of stat imaginable. For most of what I could see playing Hitz Pro in the season mode, there are a long list of statistics to eye over. Granted I'm not a hockey expert yet, there is enough for me to know who my most productive players are from goals, assists, and steals. I know who my bruisers are from the penalty minutes they rack up during the game. The more I get into the season mode, the more essential the stats are going to be, and I'm very happy to see Midway making the effort to include more stats than I've seen in their previous sports titles.



As for the depth of the game, there are four different games of hockey to play (not including the aforementioned hockey school) that include: Exhibition, Franchise mode, Season mode, and Pick-up hockey. Exhibition mode is the most basic single game mode there is and always consists of choosing two teams and going head to head as if it were a regular season game. There are no strings attached and no stat tracking once the game is finished, except for user data that's stored on the memory card. The game has the most unique franchise mode I've seen. It lets you start a brand new team in the city of your choice with a list of names to choose from. You then enter a tournament against other independent league teams vying for a spot in the NHL. Win the tournament and you can take your new franchise into an NHL season mode. In the franchise mode, there are also tasks to complete in each game. Complete these tasks and get something that's known as "Hero" equipment. These special items give your players extra ability points. This essentially helps you to build your team up as it progresses through the tournament. The tasks are usually pretty simple like "score a goal with Armstrong" or "get an assist with Casey." Gearing your players up with special equipment will become an essential part of the formula for winning the tournament and advancing into the NHL with your created team.

Finishing the tournament should get your new franchise enabled for importing into the NHL where it can compete against the rest of the league, which brings us to the season mode. This is a pretty standard mode as far as sports games go. This lets the gamer control a hockey team from an ownership position, and it becomes the user's duty to manage the roster, sign free agents, cut players, and get the team to the Stanley cup (or at least the playoffs). This mode permits the user to play a full NHL season and compete to get into the playoffs. Your goal is to advance to the Stanley cup and win it.

Pick-up hockey seems to be the most basic game of hockey possible, even more basic than the exhibition game I mentioned above, literally. You can play a game of hockey on a pond, in a park, or in a parking lot. It's fun and a bit unique. It's definitely a nice transition from the indoor hockey games that will dominate the scenery for the most part. It really helps to have these different locations to play a game of hockey at every now and then. For each locale, there are two teams to choose from and scoring stipulations that can either shorten or lengthen the game based on difficulty to complete. This is not the standard hockey game with a time limit. This is really a mode that aims to freshen the experience briefly in between more serious play.