What do you want out of a hockey game? If you're looking for a moderately realistic sports simulation, a la Madden NFL 2003, odds are you'll be disappointed in NHL 2003. On the other hand, if you simply want to run-and-gun up and down the ice, focusing mainly on big hits, 100 MPH slapshots, loose defense, and one-on-one confrontations with the goalie, then NHL 2003 is the gold standard. But even so, a few AI problems keep it from reaching expectations.

Good, Bad, and Just Plain Silly

As with most EA Sports releases, NHL 2003 has received its share of tweaks and adjustments from previous versions. The new manual deke ability is a neat way to get past a defender or force the goalie to commit. It's actually very easy to use; you simply press and hold the deke button on your gamepad and move the player as normal. Good puck handlers (Jagr, Federov, etc.) are much better at this than lumbering enforcer on your checking line (think: Tie Domi), and it makes scoring on a breakaway a little bit easier than before. The problem: there are a lot of breakaways.

Defensive positioning continues to be a problem, and coupled with the pinpoint passing accuracy of nearly every player (including the goalie), it leads to a lot of two-on-one and lone breakaway chances every game. Breakaways are exciting -- there's no question about that -- but you lessen the thrill of the play when you see it seven or eight times a game.

By far the best new "feature" in NHL 2003 is the way goals are scored. No longer are you required to rifle off a perfectly timed one-timer. You can score in a myriad of ways from wrap-arounds and rebounds to blue line slapshots to goals that bounce in off a goalie's pad. The best part of all of this is that the goalies can just flat out miss the puck from time to time -- something that almost never happened in previous versions.

The AI is hit and miss. If you judge the AI on how well it replicates real hockey, it fails miserably. Thankfully, some of the basic AI holes from previous editions are fixed up so that it's not super easy to just race down the wing and rifle off an uncontested slapshot. The AI does a good job of trying to center the puck when given the opportunity -- it will even dump the puck from time to time. Unfortunately, those opportunities are few-and-far between. The offensive AI just flat out has no idea what it's doing. It has no idea if it's up a goal in the 3rd period or if it's down two goals with a few minutes to play -- it plays the exact same game regardless of the situation or the personnel involved. The basic tactic is the same: fast break hockey. The CPU will push the puck regardless of the circumstance and it doesn't care if it has the advantage or not. The only time the CPU will change offensive tactics is when playing short-handed. Each team has a set strategy (such as "Behind the Net"), but you'll be hard-pressed to notice a difference in how a defensive team such as Carolina plays compared to an offensive-minded team such as the Red Wings. Each team behaves the same way … and that just isn't hockey, no matter how you slice it.

Finally, the way face-offs are handled needs to be reworked. It's still far too easy to win a face-off regardless of the skill levels of the players. When you win 33 of 37 face-offs, you know there is a problem.

Slider Shenanigans

The AI sliders are back and play a prominent role in getting the game to play a better brand of hockey. You can tweak everything from game speed to hitting power. The problem with the sliders is that a few settings are impossible to tweak accurately. The passing slider, for example, is on a 0-6 point scale, but setting the scale to anything greater than zero means you can expect to complete about 90% of your passes, regardless of the team you use. However, when you set the slider to zero, passing becomes incredibly frustrating. There's simply no good middle ground. (One important note: if you set the injury slider higher than "1" you can expect at least one injury per game, and usually a serious one. You have been warned.)

The fighting just looks ¿ bad.
Perhaps the biggest slider boo-boo concerns the all important Player and Goalie Boosts. These sliders help you set the level of difficulty precisely how you want it. You can make the AI goalies a little easier to score on or make your players, or the CPUs, a bit faster or slower. In exhibition mode these sliders are available, but inexplicably in franchise mode they're not there. This is a major oversight and we can only hope it will be addressed in a patch.