Flyers in the Fat City

Posted by Bill

Living in South Louisiana for the sports season of 2012-2013 there wasn’t much to look forward to.  As some of you know I am a LSU, Saints, and hockey fan.  Between the New Orleans Saints not doing well due to the bounty suspensions, LSU having a new quarterback and the same coach, and Les Miles who has no clue how timeouts or the offense work, I became overly excited about the upcoming hockey season.  I called my cable provider, priced out the NHL network and was ready to become a total recluse for the entire season.

More absorbent than competing brands

I pulled out my Philadelphia Flyers jersey, dusted off my Flyers pennant, and prepared my living room to be all hockey all the time.  Next thing I knew the NHL had its second lockout in the past 8 years.  What was I supposed to do with myself?  I was down to hockey as my only sports lifeline and the waters were rising steadily.  In my desperation I actually thought about watching darts or bowling, only to discover that there aren’t enough televised events between both the sports to come close to filling the gap.

Looks exciting to me

Now, if I couldn’t watch hockey, maybe I could at least play hockey.  I know what you’re thinking; fat chance of that in the fat city, and it would require me to vacate my lovingly prepared living room hockey shrine.  But thanks to the rapid pace of technological advancement in the 21^st century I had the next best thing right beneath my TV: the Xbox!

And it even has Flyers captain Claude Giroux on the cover...

I decided to venture out of my hockey cave to buy the NHL 2013 video game.  Now, before you start imagining that I have a shelf full of every hockey game from 1994 to date, this would actually be the first NHL game I had even played since the 1997 version for the first generation Playstation.  I don’t really do console sports games, but I was desperate.  I was drowning in a sea of epic sports failures casting about for anything that would keep me afloat.  I wasn’t expecting true satisfaction.  I was hoping for a pale, ultimately unsatisfying imitation just to keep the withdrawal at bay.  I got one heck of a surprise when I popped that crisp new NHL game into my Xbox.

In the last 16 years sports games have come a long way.  Back in the day when Wayne Gretzky, Jaromir Jagr, and Eric Lindros were the kings of the rink, hockey games only consisted of passing, shooting, and checking.  It was a glorified table hockey game, fun as a mild diversion, but not really hockey.  Fast forward 15 years and things are completely different.  

Ah, the 90s...I'm just glad we didn't have high def TVs

The way computer/video game programmers today are able to make a game that is so close to the actual physics of being on ice is amazing. Instead of being able to turn on a dime, the width of your turn is now based on your speed, and even breaking on the ice is felt through controller vibration.  Now, I haven’t played one of these things since 1997, and apparently I completely lucked out.  What I was experiencing was a new, radical departure from the NHL format, which must not have changed much in the intervening years.

  

They look different but apparently played exactly the same

The more I played NHL 13, the more I wondered how much previous installments must have been burdened with a drive to recapture the halcyon days of videogame hockey in the mid-90's.  This new, genuine attempt at real ice skating physics is said to make NHL 13 the most worthwhile hockey game in years. With a looming players’ strike that almost killed the real life 2012-2013 season, I found myself playing NHL 13 more so than expected.

I think they even got Giroux's teeth right, although i guess it wouldn't take much

Although a good video game is always fun to play, it is hard to hold a Lablatt Blue with two hands on a controller. With that said I will continue to play NHL 2013 but will have to also watch the Flyers when they are playing on TV, which is not too often due to living in a climate where ice is only seen in cocktails and chests full of beer.