Officially licensed by the NHL and the NHLPA, NHL Hitz 20-03 unleashes a total hockey experience with even more visually stunning graphics, lightning-fast, adrenaline-style hockey animations, much improved artificial intelligence, numerous all-new gameplay modes and realistic NHL attributes. As the only dedicated adrenaline-style hockey videogame franchise for next-generation platforms, NHL Hitz 20-03 showcases over-the- top 3-on-3 (plus goalies) gameplay with players who leap, glide, check, pass and score on would-be defenders.

NHL Hitz is the first Ice Hockey game I've had the fortune of playing for the Xbox and I hate to admit it, but when it comes to games based on sports that I don't play myself, I generally find myself turning up the game speed a notch or two if it's an available in game option to increase the amount of action.

I enjoy watching ice hockey on television but it's rarely televised, so unfortunately the memory of the event usually fades pretty fast. It's with this in mind that I always look forward to, among others, Ice Hockey games so I can take part in these more obscure sports myself.

Imagine taking all the good bits about Ice Hockey, the bullet passes, the slapshots, the bodychecks and the fighting, then keeping them locked up in a cage and feeding them nothing but steroids while pumping Britney Spears to them 24/7... well this is what NHL Hitz 2003 from Acclaim is like. It's a mad as hell completely over the top, action packed, violent and brutal version of ice hockey just oozing playability, action and great fun.

The basic controls in NHL Hitz 2003 are pretty straight forward and sports gamers will find most of them pretty familiar from other sporting titles. R trigger is used for Turbo, X shoots, and A selects the player you want to control or passes the puck to another player.

Well that's the basics but NHL Hitz 2003 has heaps more controls that are very easy to learn in no time at all. Without the puck, B does a massive body check on your opponents, line them up and just before contact, and hit B to take them out! If you time it correctly you will totally flatten them, knock their helmet off or if at the edge of the rink you may even smash them through the protective barrier! Kinda like breaking the back board in basketball but it can happen pretty regularly and is damn satisfying to pull off.

Other moves are fake shots, fake shot - pass, one timers and even a fake shot - pass - one timer move that takes a bit of skill and timing to pull off. To help you learn all these moves the game has a Hockey School where NHL's greatest coach of all time, Scotty Bowman takes you lesson-by-lesson through all the skills you'll need.

Other game modes include your normal exhibition match, franchise mode where you can create a team and try to get into the NHL. You can also play through a complete NHL season as your favourite team or if that's not enough, play through all the mini games as well that include, Tic Tac Toe, Control, King of the Ring, Keep Away, Shootout, and Shooting Gallery.

One example, Shooting Gallery sets you up on a rooftop with three other players and the goal is to get control of the puck, skate near the edge of the building and shoot out windows in the adjacent building! The mini games are great fun and an awesome surprise.

There's also a great ‘create a player' mode that seems to be lacking more and more from some major sports titles and is always welcome as I really enjoy creating my own digital likeness in the game and then using that character as my main player.

A cool feature of NHL Hitz 2003 that separates it from your normal Ice Hockey game is the ‘on fire' mode. All the body checks and great defence you perform slowly fill up your ‘On-Fire' meter, hit the white button to catch fire and lighting flashes down out of the sky to your player(s) increasing all their attributes by 20%. The announcer even mentions when a team is about to go ‘On-Fire' in case you forget to keep an eye on your fire meter.

I found the gameplay in NHL Hitz 2003 fast, frantic and action packed, but best of all immense fun to play and extremely easy to get into.

The players are extremely well detailed with individual faces, animations and heaps of voices as well. Note to all sports game developers, here's how to create a crowd for your sports games. Throw away all those flat sprite based game crowds forever as the crowd in this game looks amazing. Every crowd member is polygon based and quite frankly, looks incredible. They do the Mexican wave, stand up and cheer, and one time after bodychecking a guy through the safety glass, I watched the replay and noticed the crowd in that area get up and start waving their arms in the air!

You'll see great little touches like helmets flying off players that you bodycheck and the crowd throwing water bottles and hats onto the rink. Everything moves at a very solid and slick framerate and the action always stays nice and smooth. I was not expecting the graphics in NHL Hitz 2003 to be as polished as what they are, they look great.

The announcers in NHL Hitz are nice and over the top, totally suiting this style of game. The in-game soundtrack is also decent, featuring bands like Rob Zombie but if he's not your style then you can always play back your custom soundtracks from your Xbox hard drive. The sound effects and music in the game really add heaps of atmosphere but like any sports game, eventually get repetitive. The bodychecks make a pretty impressive sound as well making them very enjoyable to pull off.