Snes

     Attention deficit adolescents notwithstanding, the worst of the worst to this date has to be NHL 2K5. Like most people who own this game it was the $10 price tag that won me over. I hadn't played a hockey game in many years, which for a person such as myself, was somewhat ironic. Being Canadian, I am a fan of the hockey sport. I grew up playing it like most kids in my country do. I was even quite good at it for a time. In fact, it was largely due to NHL 94 and 95 that I relentlessly bombarded my parents with puppy dog eyes and "pwitty pweases" to convince them to buy me my first console, a Sega Genesis. Although I suppose technically I had a NES before that, but our family NES was more like a hand-me-down console that I claimed ownership of once my sister lost interest in it. Either way, nothing I had ever played on the NES conditioned me to expect the glorious triumph that was NHL 94. The ability to play virtual 5 on 5 hockey was a dream realized. No longer did I have to imagine I was playing against 5 other players in the basement of my house. No longer did I have to pretend to be every other player on my team. No longer did I have to invent ways of... well, you see where I'm going with this. For the first time in my entire life I had the ability to play a game of hockey, with all my idolized sports heroes, any time I felt like it. It was heaven.

     Heaven only lasted about 3 years. Once the first 3d hockey games hit the market I started to lose interest in hockey as a sport, and completely lost interest in hockey as a videogame. The first onslaught of games were utterly incomprehensible while developers struggled with various camera views, and the gameplay itself suffered miserably. AI routines were ridiculous, graphics brutal, and overall fun factor became non-existent. After spending an exorbitant amount of money on NHL Breakaway 99, and being wholly disappointed with my purchase, I had stayed away from even renting another hockey game for over half a decade. I would have kept my distance if not for some latent force within that seduced me to succumb to NHL 2K5's charming ways. Whether this latent force was some kind of penny pinching sixth sense, or rather something deeply rooted in my Canadian heritage, seeing NHL 2K5 on the shelf for $10 unleashed this embryonic urge. Without giving it much thought I had made my purchase, for better or for worse.