NHL 2K6

Like Madden NFL 06, I don’t really know much about Ice Hockey and still don’t after playing the game. The general summary appears to be, get the puck in the opponent’s net and almost anything goes relating to how you do it.

As it’s a 2006 (ugly) game with no storyline, I’m just going to do another play-by-play on the achievements.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 5 Achievements

Firstly, all achievements are difficulty specific meaning that you have to perform said action on said difficulty level – or higher. Here we go.

1.       Score on a breakaway (Amateur). I’m not sure what a breakaway is but I’m assuming it is turning defence into attack and scoring. Every goal I scored seemed to be on a breakaway so it’s a fairly straightforward achievement.

2.       Score a goal with defenseman (Pro). Again, fairly straightforward. Simply give it to a man at the back, have him run at the other team and score. Ping!

3.       Score goal when two men down (Pro). The most convoluted part of this one is actually getting the men sent off. I struggled with committing fouls at first but once I worked out the rules - after an internet consultation - this one was also a breeze.

4.       Score in Under 1:00 (All-Star). I think I got lucky with this. I maximised the in game timer but didn’t need to. The first shot I had went in after only twenty in game seconds.

5.       Score on penalty shot (All-Star). This one was a bitch. With the above difficulty in even committing fouls, it was even harder to draw one from an opponent on the highest difficulty level. In the end, I gave up with legitimate means and did it using four controllers. Once I eventually got the penalty shot (I had to find a video of what this looked like) I was shit scared of missing the goal. Thankfully I didn’t and I was able to put NHL06 away forever.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I did enjoy the gameplay. It was very relaxing and carefree once I had gotten used to controls and I would have pursued more of these but, like I said in my Madden review, EA’s tendency to close servers has led to a lot of discontinued achievements so this may be my only taste of NHL gameplay.