989 is back at it with their release of NHL Faceoff 2001 for the Playstation2. If youve followed the Playstation2 at all, you undoubtedly know the tarnished name of 989 Sports. Hoping to turn things around 989 handed the series to Solworks, a company founded by Craig Broadbrooks, who worked on past Playstation versions of the Faceoff series. While not as horrendous as what weve previously seen from 989, this game still has many issues that keep it out of the same league as NHL 2001.

The graphics found in Faceoff are bad, plain and simple. In fact plain and simple is a good way to describe the graphics on a whole. From what I can tell, the players dont look like they do in real life, its hard to see because the replay never lets you get close enough to examine them, which is a tell-tale sign that something is amiss. All of the players have the same size body, which is normally not a big problem unless they are fat and ugly, and you guessed it, the players all are big tubs of jagged goo here. One a plus note, the framerate is very fast, and stays consistent throughout play. During replays its another story, but replays dont affect gameplay, so I wont complain.

Even the arenas arent safe from the ugliness of this game. Sure they have championship banners hanging in the rafters, but what gives with the Rafter-cam that pops up during breaks in the action? The camera shows a mind numbingly bad shot of the roof of the building, and Im not talking the championship banners here, I mean the top of the scoreboard and the actual ceiling. Its bizarre, ugly, and to be honest it scares me. Maybe it doesnt actually scare me, but I definitely dont like it one bit. Upon further inspection, Ive decided that the camera focuses on the ceiling to spare those playing the game from witnessing the heinous crowd. They are nothing but flat cutouts, they dont move a bit, and when they are combined with the dimly lit arenas, it looks like nobody is there. They dont even pump their hands up and down, what gives? When not focusing on a crack in the ceiling, the camera spends a good deal of time being inept near the ice. When you are playing and heading up ice everything is easy to see, and the camera is not a bother. When you are heading towards the bottom of the screen, its a different story. The camera is so low to the ice when you are at the top of the screen it doesnt have time to zoom out far enough to keep up with the action when you are headed down. This leaves you relying on the offsides indicator in the corner to tell you if you have teammates ahead, and on defense youll have no clue where your defenders are until it is too late.

Aurally this game is middle of the road, nothing amazing and nothing that makes me wish that I were deaf. The announcing is handled by ABCs Mike Emrick and Darren Pang. They do a nice job calling the action on the ice, they keep up with the play, and they dont say a lot of stupid things over and over. They dont provide the in-depth analysis found in many of todays games, and sometimes this insight is missed. Sure you rarely hear anything groundbreaking from an announcer, but once in a while they may actually point on something that you didnt realize. Simple things such as maybe your powerplay hasnt converted in so many attempts, or maybe you had your pressure defense on and your guys are getting tired quickly, stuff like this could have added a lot to this game

The on ice effects are standard fare, the puck will make a loud ping when it hits the goalpost, the boards will rattle when you hit them, and the players will grunt when you knock them to the ice. In keeping with the trend found in their other releases, 989 has a few licensed songs that are included during the game. Respect Takin Care of Business, everyones favorite Wooly Bully and a few others are presented during the game. Unfortunately they usually only play during Rafter-cam segments, so they dont add much to the atmosphere of the game. Maybe if the music was mixed with a rowdier sounding crowd it would be better, but it looks like we might have to wait until next year to find out.

With all of its problems on the audio/visual side of things, Im happy to report that this game is actually quite playable. All of the standard play modes are available, except for a franchise mode. A legends mode is available, but as usual because of all the licenses that must be had to make a complete game, there are a few notable players missing, mainly Wayne Gretzky. Although the Great One is missing, Solworks did manage to get Mario Lemieux into the game. One feature that I was personally very excited to see make into the game was the multi-team season mode. This mode lets you play all of your games even if one of your friends who has the next game is not around. This makes seasons a breeze to play, even among friends with conflicting schedules. Oh how I wish this feature was around when I was in college. One problem that I found while playing a season was that the +/- ratings are not always correct. In the first game of the season, Ray Borque scored a goal, but his line was also scored upon. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, so his +/- should have been zero. Instead it was a -1 along with everyone else on his line, so unless I am misinformed or just plain crazy, this is incorrect, and should have been caught during play testing. Stat tracking errors like this can really diminish the fun that you have during a season especially when you are in the running for various end of the season trophies, so I take problems like this seriously. Shootout mode is also available to those that wish to practice their one on one skills, but even on all-star, it is worthless. The computer controlled player went left nearly every time, and didnt shoot until he had almost no angle. The opposing goalie was tough, but all this did was cause 0-0 shootouts that went twelve rounds until I feel asleep and was scored upon.

The controls found here are standard for a hockey game, with one major problem. It seems that 989s developers only posses the original Playstation controllers that lack analog buttons, because like other 989 games before it, this game has no analog support. In this day and age there is no excuse for a sports game not to have analog control. For a company whose motto is To produce the best games on the market. Period this is inexplicable. After figuring out that it was 989 that was broken and not my controller I found the controls to be quite tolerable, with a few minor issues. The players feel a bit floaty and unresponsive on defense, but on offense they are quick to respond to any command. There is a nice drop pass feature that is very useful when bringing the puck up through the zone, and once I got a handle on it, I used it all the time. While a nice drop pass move is available, one move that didnt make the cut was a deke move of any kind. This leaves you with very little to fool the goalie with or to get by defenders. NHL 95 for the SNES had a juke move and this game doesnt, words escape me on this one.

The game sports the usual difficulty levels, and just like all of the other hockey games out there, the only challenge is found on all-star difficulty. Even then the AI is not going to perform any groundbreaking feats of skill, in fact on some levels its rather unintelligent. Players take forever to get back when they are in an offside position, and they are constantly committing random stupid penalties away from the action. The poor auto replay function is so choppy and close to the action it is often difficult to discern what actually happened. Helping to break up the flow of the game is the computers propensity for being offside, and making two-line passes. Turning these penalties off will alleviate this issue, but then some people would say that youre not playing real hockey.

The player animations are well done, though they dont show much variety. The goalie animations, provided by Nikolai Khabibulin are one of the few bright spots in the game. Youre goalie will flop all over the ice, and do whatever it takes to keep the puck out of the back of the net. The boards will rattle and shake like they were hit by a truck when someone is pushed into them, and while this makes a punishing check appear even more punishing, they also rattle the same when you just run into them lightly on your own accord. Speaking of checking, its very difficult to do because of the way defensive players respond, but all you have to do is make contact and the puckhandler will go down. This is very frustrating when you are on a power play and all of the players are crowded on one end of the ice. The defensive player will get behind you and give you a little love tap, and down goes your player. This might not be so bad but the computer will dump the puck down the ice, and you will have to regroup. Knocking down the puck when it is in mid-air is not an option because that animation is nowhere to be seen. This combined with the computer dumping the puck down ice all of the time makes for a very frustrating powerplay experience.

Other than the multi-player season mode, the thing I that most excited me about Faceoff was that the hats are back! When a player scores a hat trick, the hometown fans will litter the ice with their caps. Im not talking one or two hats, but a whole bunch; theres even a Dr. Seuss hat or two out there. Sure its something small, but it made my day to see that back in a game. Fighting is present, and it is much too prevalent. Fights break out all of the time, and how prone to brawling a player is in real life seems to have little effect on who throws down the gloves. Mario Lemieux was the biggest goon in this game, and taking into account the fact that he didnt play for three years, when was the last time you saw him fight? The fights arent only bad because the are too frequent, they are bad because they are poorly executed. Two poorly drawn players swinging wildly at each other while standing perfectly still, is not my idea of a good hockey fight. Again my recommendation is to head to the options menu and turn them off.

Lets take a look back shall we? The game looks bad, sounds average, but its rather fun to play. The multi-player season mode adds loads of replay value to this title, even though it is lacking a franchise mode. The nicely animated goalies, hats on the ice, and the inclusion of Super Mario give this game some redeeming qualities, and make it a good rental for those of you that were unhappy with NHL 2001. All of the problems found in this game are minor, yet when they are added up they equal a sloppy game, that could have used more time in development. Hopefully with this years edition under their belts, Solworks and 989 can learn from their mistakes, take the stuff that worked, and give EA a run for their money next year. Sure it probably wont happen, but anythings possible.