NHL 2003 is a very good hockey game. Actually it's great for people who didn't play a lot with NHL 2002 because the innovations between the two are pretty rare. The graphics are not really better, I haven't seen any difference. You still can't use the music on your Xbox hard drive. Another bad point about it is the slowdowns during the play, the really pissed me off as hell.

Graphics

As I said it before, there's no difference between graphics from this game and the graphics from NHL 2002. There are some new cut seens, such as the referee going to see the coach to tell him why his player got penalized. The graphics are good so even if they are not really better then last years graphics, it doesn't matter. They could've worked slightly on the fans during the play because they still look like card boards.

+ Some new cut seens
- No innovations

Sounds

Again this year, EA gave us Don Taylor and Jim Hughson as the commentators. I personally think it's a bad idea because these two don't make like your watching hockey on television or something like that. They always say stupid jokes and you just don't want commentaries anymore after a while. As I mentioned it earlier, there's no possibility to use the music from your hard drive. The soundtrack contains about 10-15 tracks that plays over and over so you put the sound of the music off too. Next, you have rink sounds. That's the big point of the sound part. It makes like if you were actually there, sitting near the hockey rink.But if you put rink sounds on, you cant have commentators anymore.

+ Rink sounds
- Can't have rink sounds and commentators at the same time
- Commentators suck bad
- It's impossible to use music from the hard drive
- Soundtrack is too small

Gameplay

Finally, we are at a good point of this game. One of the innovations from this year are the rebounds. EA put a lot of time on the puck physics and we can see it in the game. It makes more realistic goals that you actually couldn't do in last year's version (ex: low shot from a defense men gets block by the goalie but he can't control it so one of your player near the net takes the puck and shoots it top-corner for the goal). A game isn't prefect so there still are bad things about it, especially one. The slow-downs during the play really frustrates me. They don't happen that often so you can live with them. The modes almost didn't change at all. The only thing I could say is that the Franchise Mode (don't bother for the name, it's like the season mode from NHL 2002) is slightly better. There also the new gamebreaker that slows down the play when your need it, it makes NHL 2003 a more arcade style game.

+ Great puck physics
+ Slightly better franchise mode
+- Gamebreaker
- Slow-downs during the game

Controls

Not much to say about this. The manual deke function sucks bad and it looks long to learn how to control it correctly so I don't use it. You have a good control over what type of shot you want to execute. They didn't really made the goalie control better so that another bad point.

+ Good control over the type of shot
- Manual deke isn't good, and it's tough to learn
- Goalie control is bad

Overall

NHL 2003 is a very good game. If you don't own NHL 2002, I really suggest you to buy this game. If you have NHL 2002, try to exchange it so you could get NHL 2003 for lesser than 50$. I don't think it's worth keeping NHL 2002 and NHL 2003 because they really look-alike. This game should give you hours of fun. As I said earlier, what hurts this game bad are the slow-downs during play and the commentators.

MOST IMPORTANT POINTS

+ Great puck physics
+ Rink sounds
- Slow-downs
- Commentators are very bad