About the game
NHL 2005 is an ice hockey video game released in 2004, the successor to NHL 2004. It was developed by EA Black Box and published by EA Sports as part of the NHL series, and it came out on Windows, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox.
The IIHF licence that brought in the World Cup mode also let EA use real international jerseys, which it did only this once. Earlier games used jerseys the studio designed itself, with a flag to show the country. Extra NHL jerseys and logos were included too, among them the defunct Atlanta Flames, Winnipeg Jets, Colorado Rockies and Quebec Nordiques, and old-style Kings, Capitals and Canucks uniforms from the 1970s and 1980s.
Reviews on the console versions were generally favourable. The Windows version was stripped down to the basics and left out create-a-player, and it got average reviews.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 77 out of 100 (Xbox). Individual reviews: IGN 8.3/10, GameSpot 7.9/10, GameSpy 4/5, GameZone 8.3/10, Game Informer 8.5/10, GamePro 4/5, Official Xbox Magazine 8.5/10, Electronic Gaming Monthly 6.3/10.
Good to know
- The North American cover shows Markus Naslund. The Finnish release put Olli Jokinen on the cover instead.
- It is the only NHL game to use real international jerseys, thanks to the IIHF licence behind the World Cup mode.
- The World Cup mode lets you build a national team from scratch and import real arenas for it.
- Defunct teams such as the Atlanta Flames, Winnipeg Jets, Colorado Rockies and Quebec Nordiques are included as extra jerseys and logos.
- The Windows version dropped create-a-player, so the console versions are the full game.
