''NHL 2004'', developed by the

EA Black Box EA Black Box (formerly Black Box Games) was a video game developer based in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, founded in 1998 by former employees of Radical Entertainment and later acquired by Electronic Arts (EA). The developers are primarily ...

studios, is an

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

. It is the successor to ''

NHL 2003 ''NHL 2003'' is an ice hockey video game developed by EA Canada and published by EA Sports. It was released in 2002 as the successor to ''NHL 2002''. Jarome Iginla appears as the cover athlete and spokesperson of the game. Iginla appears in the B ...

''. The game adds three European Elite Leagues: Germany's

Deutsche Eishockey Liga The Deutsche Eishockey Liga (for sponsorship reasons called "PENNY Deutsche Eishockey Liga") (; English: ''German Ice Hockey League'') or DEL, is a German professional ice hockey league and the highest division in German ice hockey. Founded in ...

(DEL), Sweden's

Elitserien Elitserien (literally, "the Elite League") is the name of several Swedish nationwide sport leagues. In many sports, Elitserien is the highest league, with the second highest named Allsvenskan. Elitserien leagues at present: * Elitserien (badmint ...

(SEL), and Finland's

SM-liiga The SM-liiga (marketed as just Liiga from 2013 on), (Finnish for ''League'') colloquially called the Finnish Elite League in English or FM-ligan in Swedish, is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. It is one of the six founding leagu ...

Features

The game included many improvements to its gameplay (more realistic puck and rebound control and better checking) and game modes (a completely reworked franchise mode renamed "Dynasty"). In addition to the gameplay improvements, one particular non-gameplay improvement was added. When a team wins the

Stanley Cup Finals The Stanley Cup Finals in ice hockey (also known as the Stanley Cup Final among various media, french: Finale de la Coupe Stanley) is the National Hockey League's (NHL) championship series to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup, North America ...

, a large-scale celebration ensues. It included players skating around the ice holding the Cup over their heads. This then led to the common snapshot of the team and the coaches that holds true in the NHL. A "secret" song ("

Shatterday "Shatterday" is the first segment of the premiere episode of the television series ''The Twilight Zone (1985 TV series), The Twilight Zone''. The story follows a man who finds that a double of himself has moved into his apartment and is taking ov ...

" by

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) plays while the animation shows the stats of the players in the picture, ending with the captain. Because of these additions, it was praised as one of the best games in the series to date.

Reception

The game received "favorable" reviews on all platforms according to the

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website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nhl 2004 2003 video games Electronic Arts games GameCube games NHL (video game series) PlayStation 2 games Windows games Xbox games EA Sports games Video games set in 2003 Video games set in 2004 Video games set in the United States Video games set in Canada Video games developed in Canada