Sega Sports NHL2k2 was the final release for the Dreamcast. It is also the first showing of their revamped hockey engine, which will begin to make appearances on the newer systems next year. The original NHL2k2 was coded by Blackbox and showed up on the Dreamcast a couple months after the launch of the system. Although it played a great game of hockey, building upon the lineage started on the Sega Saturn, the title just didn't have the same polish or feeling as the other games on the Sega Sports line, developed by Visual Concepts. The end result is that the NHL2k series took a year off, while Visual Concepts was given the reigns of the hockey project, which was coded by Treyarch. The result: A much more polished and satisfying game of hockey, and an excellent base to build a franchise upon.

Given that this was the last game on the Dreamcast, I'm guessing that Sega wanted this game out to do a little bit of market research and live testing to kick the tires and feel out the engine. At least that would make sense to me since some of the things that are lacking in the game are generally the least important to me. However, a lot of people would jump all over these points and say the game just sucks. First off, the announcing. Grant it, I'm not one who oo's and ah's over bells and whistles all the time, but the announcing in this game is weak at best. It is plain, sometimes lifeless and worst of all, it starts repeating lines during a single game with 20 minute periods. To me, that is a big no-no. The crowd is also relatively weak. In a sports game, especially one like hockey, I expect to really hear the crowd get into it. The crowd just doesn't seem like it cares. I guess they are from New Jersey, I'm not sure. Then we have the music. I don't know about you, but I never particularly cared for 2-Unlimited even when they were popular when I was in high school. I think it's time to move on to something that might actually be played in a stadium. It is a nitpick, I know, but it just annoyed me to hear that song as the game's opening movie played, and then every subsequent time the home team hit the ice.

Now that the nit-picking is out of the way, I want to talk about the meat of the game, the gameplay itself. This game IS hockey! Simple as that. It gives you more in-game control that any other hockey game I've ever played. The line changes have been improved over Blackbox's method, allowing for quick changes of both offence and defence lines independently. Not only can you make line changes on the fly, but you can even change the overall aggressiveness of the play as well as make coaching decisions that dictate how the rest of your team plays when you are not controlling them. You can also change your face positioning to be either normal, defensive or aggressive, depending upon your needs. Your standard hockey controls are in there as well, giving you full access to speed bursts, flip passes, checks, one-timers, etc.

The speed of the game is damn near perfect, but adjustable for those who either want it faster or slower. The players behave as they should, stronger players being harder to knock down, faster being harder to catch, people with scoring hands tend to make pretty goals and so forth. The players control like they should on ice and perform every move as they should in silky smooth fashion. Treyarch seems to have bumped up the framerate considerably since the original NHL2k, which seemed way choppier than this game is.

The best touches of this game come from the way they looked at a few 'problems' in previous hockey games. My main gripe has always been about goalies and scoring. In most other games, it seems that it really doesn't matter how you throw the puck at the net since some pre-determined algorithm decided if it was a goal or not. Pucks would seemingly go straight through a goalie and, worse yet, obviously beaten goalies still would somehow make a save. Not so in NHL2k2. Goalie detection in this game is second to none. There is even a line of sight rating for goalies allowing for the implementation of a screen play, unlike other hockey games. I have even seen a goalie franticly search for a puck as a shot taken was deflected straight into the air, up and over the goalie's shoulder. There is no magical force field around the goalie in this game, which really takes away the 'sweet spots' found in most hockey games. Games generally remain closer in score than more other hockey games and rarely are wins easy. The CPU tends to give you a challenge to the very end. The CPU even manages line changes, coaching decisions, etc, better than most human opponents would. Games won in NHL2k2 are always satisfying.

NHL2k2 features vastly improved graphics over its predecessor . The player models are better, the animation is much smoother and the ice looks, well, like ice with nice reflections that dull as the game continues, leaving skate lines all over the place. The stadiums look wonderful and the crowd features plenty of low-res, animated 2-D models moving around. It looks decent enough and doesn't tax the hardware so that it takes away from the gameplay, which is fine by me. Coaches seem to be made out of a couple generic models though, I'd like to see that chance in the future. The game menus follow the now known Visual Concepts look and feel, which help identify the game as truly part of Sega Sport 2k series of games. The best part is that there are a few good camera angles which lend itself to great gameplay. I was pleasantly surprised by them, since a lot of games tend to go for more gimmicky or non-useful camera angles.

In the end, I am left feeling excited about the future. NHL2k2 is simply the most well done hockey engine I've ever played. It feels like hockey should feel, it plays like hockey should play. The innovations in scoring and goal tending make this title heads over heals above the competition in my opinion. If bells and whistles are as important to you, then this is easily the best choice or any hockey fan out there. However, many gamers out there love the bells and whistles and won't settle for anything less, no matter how poor the actual gameplay is. As I said before, I see this game as the base that the future of the series will be built upon. If that is the case, then we are looking at one hell of a hockey game for next year.