When the Xbox 360 launched late last year, sports gamers were
happy to see that many of their favorite genres made the leap
into the next generation. We had football and golf games on the
day the system hit stores, with tennis and baseball titles
coming in later in the launch window. One complaint that many
folks had, however, was the fact that many of these games didn't
really feel like true "next-gen" gaming. The lone hockey title
for the system, NHL 2K6 from 2K Sports, suffered from this
ailment, offering a game that looked a bit better than it's
current-gen counterpart (ooh, the ice is so shiny!), but really
didn't offer much in the way of so-called next-gen gameplay
mechanics. Now, EA is taking a shot with their first Xbox 360
hockey title, NHL 07, and it's like nothing we've seen before.
The most dramatic addition to EA's seminal NHL series is one
that may very well forever change the way we play hockey games.
For eons (well, at least since EA's first NHL title on the SEGA
Genesis), controls have been