Today, 2K Games announced a brand new NHL 2K game for mobile devices, and recently I had the chance to stop by their offices and give a near-final version of the game a spin. As a huge hockey fan, both the virtual kind and the real life kind, I was very pleased with how NHL 2K played. You may recall that this isn’t the first time this hockey series has graced the iOS platform, as 2K released NHL 2K11 way, way back in August of 2010. I really loved that game, and it was easily the best hockey game on iOS. Well, it’s not like it had a lot of competition, but still it was a solid mobile game of hockey.
Today, not a whole lot has changed. There still isn’t a strong hockey game that surpasses NHL 2K11, despite it being a four-year old game. To 2K’s credit, they actually did make sure to update NHL 2K11 with things like updated rosters, Retina Display support, and 4-inch widescreen support. However, as fun as it still is, it feels incredibly outdated, and a fresh start with the new NHL 2K is just what the franchise needs on mobile.
If you played the previous NHL 2K11, then the new NHL 2K will feel very familiar gameplay-wise. The controls are distilled down to just three buttons, with a virtual analog stick for movement. The buttons change function depending on if you’re on offense or defense, and the actions they produce also change depending on what your player is doing. Overall the gameplay is simplified but still has a lot of strategy, and it reminds me a lot of hockey games from the 16-bit era, which is a really good thing.
The biggest change in NHL 2K from its predecessor is the addition of new modes. Returning are the Quick Game, Season, Free Skate and Shootout modes from the first game, which are all pretty self-explanatory. The big new mode is My Career, which lets you start out as a nobody player and build them up to an elite NHL pro. In a neat touch, you can also play the Winter Classic, which is the NHL’s annual outdoor game. It’s not too different than just playing a Quick Game, but you’re outside and it’s snowing, which is cool. There’s also a new Mini-Rink mode, which is a 3-on-3 game on a much smaller rink, and an online multiplayer mode which lets you partake in shootouts against opponents asynchronously.
Here’s around 15 minutes of NHL 2K gameplay on an iPad Air. I play through an entire period of a Quick Game (check out my sweet shorthanded goal at around the 10:14 mark!), then I briefly check out the My Career mode followed by a quick look at a Winter Classic game, and finally a quick look at a Mini-Rink game. Unfortunately, at the time of this preview I wasn’t able to play any online shootout games.
One of the biggest bummers about my experience with NHL 2K is that visually it isn’t a great leap over the original game. The original game was pretty ugly, but again it was a game from 2010, so for the time it didn’t look all that bad. The new NHL 2K definitely has improved visuals, but not by a lot. The players are still pretty low-poly and the arenas feel totally lifeless. Luckily, the game is fast-paced and frantic enough that you’ll probably never notice, but still it’s kind of disappointing given the power of iOS devices.
Overall though, NHL 2K is a major improvement over the already fantastic original NHL 2K11 on iOS, and I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on the release version in time for the NHL hockey season to begin. NHL 2K will be launching this fall for $7.99 with no in-app purchases, and we’ll give you a head’s up once it has a firm release date.
