It happens every console generation: as the new consoles take over, less and less resources are devoted to the prior generation of consoles. It’s just one of those “circle of life” – type things that we cannot control. Who can remember NFL 97 on the Genesis for example – the Genesis was long gone as a platform of choice but someone took a prior year’s code, gave it a roster update and released it for a bargain price and people bought it anyway.

You can kind of see that sort of thought with NHL 07 for the Xbox. It’s not as bad as just a simple roster update, but you can see that more resources were put into the 360 version of the game, and that’s understandable. Not all is lost however, as the game’s publisher has set the new retail price at a mere $30, which is very nice.

There is one significant new feature in NHL 07 that deserves mentioning, and that is the skill stick control. The right thumbstick now controls all things passing related, and it’s about time. The passing control is so good, you wonder why it took all this time (since the original PlayStation at least) to map passing controls to the right thumbstick. It is just so user-intuitive and seamless that it only makes complete sense that it took almost ten years to implement.

The passing isn’t perfect and I mean that in a good way. Just because you flick the right thumbstick in the direction of a teammate does not mean that the puck will get to him. I’ve seen interceptions, weakly passed pucks that die before reaching my teammate and pucks that overshoot and miss my teammates. All I can say is that it’s about time!!

The gameplay itself is fair; too many games I’ve played resemble the arcade type hockey games of old; which may or may not be a bad thing. In NHL 2K7 it is extremely difficult to score and you’ll feel like you’ve earned kudos if you get four goals in a game; however in NHL 07, I scored four goals in the first period of my first game.

Shooting is done with a combination of the right trigger and the left stick to aim the puck into the net. You’ll see a targeting system show up on the net to help you. As always the one-timer is always a fun way to score, but unlike NHL games of old, it’s not an automatic score. If you aim for the empty part of the net, you’ll score more often than not, but defenders will be aware that you’re trying for a one timer and will try to break it up.

The AI in this game seems better than its 360 counterpart, as players do seem to play as a team rather than an individual effort. The AI does pass the puck around and hovers around the net as they should while on offense. On defense, the AI seems to have a ‘swarm’ mentality where everyone goes after the guy with the puck. While it does make puck control difficult, if you can find an open man, you should be able to score.

There are some subtle nuances that I appreciate in NHL 07 – specifically; the puck does not stick to your player like a magnet in other games. If you turn on the speed burst, you will in effect ‘dribble’ your puck and you may in fact lose control. That is a very nice touch.

Players have special icons denoting their specific abilities – whether they are star players, a “sniper” for getting into the offensive zone or a playmaker. The manual only barely touches on these items, but they are definitely worth knowing.

One area where EA needs to get in gear vs the competition is their very lackluster manual. 2K Sports game has a forty some odd page manual, while the EA manual is seven pages. The depth of the manual really helps me enjoy the game more, and it’s a shame EA can’t address this (it’s been an ongoing problem).