NHL 08 has brought hockey back to the forefront of sports video gaming. With intuitive controls, exciting gameplay and a one-two punch of audio and visual goodness, this game has just about everything that any hockey gamer could want. There is still some tuning that can be done to the game and some features that could be added in future iterations, but for now, NHL 08 can be considered an instant classic.
Along with Create-A-Play, there are two other custom modes, Create-A-Player and Create-A-Team. The Create-A-Player is moderately in-depth and very similar to the mode found in Madden 08, but nothing like the mode found in Tiger Woods 08. The Create-A-Team mode is the real bread and butter within player creativity. You can customize just about everything, including jerseys, helmet straps and gloves, but there's still room to customize your mascot. There's also every color combination you can imagine so you can rest assured that your team can look exactly the way you'd envisioned.
The number of nicknames for your team is pleasantly long and diverse, ranging from the somewhat corny "Seals" to the futuristic "Neptunes," so you'll find something that suits your taste. Once you've created your team, you load up your roster by picking any players from the NHL or newly introduced AHL rosters. You're given a salary cap, but the biggest flaw in picking players is that you don't know how much they're worth until you pick them up. I started out by picking the young powerhouses Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, and then I proceeded to pick up Stanly Cup-winning goalie Jean-Sébastien Gigučre, which drained about half of my salary cap, but I didn't know that until I picked up all three of them, which was pretty annoying.
This year's Dynasty Mode is similar to last year's, but it allows you to not only manage your NHL team, but their AHL affiliate too, and you can play as your created team, which will be given an AHL affiliate. Depending on how many games you want to play, you can either play only the 82 regular season games for your NHL team, or switch between your NHL and AHL teams to make sure that they're progressing. It's important to keep track of your AHL team, as it's the future of your NHL team. You'll conduct the same GM tasks that you've been doing for years with most sports games, such as scouting talent, dealing with contracts and salary caps and keeping track of revenue.