NHL 08

Before coming to NHL 08. I thought I'd make a little graph with a pen and paper. Lining up the 13 previous games (Powerplay '98 excluded), I noticed an obvious trend. Between '99 and 2001, the scores dropped from consistent 90s, to hovering around the 80 mark. Without reading the 2001 review, I'm fairly certain that this is the time that the jokes about EA's annual churning out of sports titles began.

So I'm going to avoid that subject, apart from maybe one snide comment at the end, and say that NHL 08 is one of the better games from the consistently recommended franchise. Providing you're playing with a gamepad, the controls are intuitive and intelligent, with the right nubbin giving you some control over the hockey stick. With play geared towards that, using the keyboard is much less fun. There's a strong managerial element that you can happily ignore, there's simple online play, and best of all, the soundtrack features the brilliant Datarock.

Using my graph, I drew a line of best fit through the scatter diagram of NHL scores. It predicted that this year's game would score 77. Shows what maths knows, this is a full three percent better than that, marred mainly by a shitty menu system.

Maybe by the year 2040 my group sample will be big enough for more reliable predictions. Jesus, that's a depressing thought.