As a sibling to an older sister that lives in Thornton, I grew up with the notion at times that my parents were playing "favorites". Granted, most of the time I was wrong, and my parents took great care of me, but you could see at times that the sister got this stuff, like her first car, while I was stuck with, say, an Atari 2600. Clearly a "favorite" issue, until I finally got my first vehicle. Of course, by then, my sister had her second, but oh well.

Anyway, "favorites" also have a way of working their way into game development. One brand can easily take off and soar, while another in the same sports library finds the perverbial shaft and gets treated with a lower end of development. Believe it or not, the Xbox 360 has seen its first case of this with 2K Sports. NBA 2K6 came out of the gates with a great deal of attention, and there's good reason for that. The textures it packs on the players are amazingly good, right down to the glistening sweat and the facial reactions. This comes on top of some already power-packed gameplay, making it an unbeatable title.

Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have NHL 2K6. I can understand 2K Sports wanting to usher in next-generation hockey sooner than EA Sports did, and their effort doesn't exactly fall into the one-star category. It does hold some interest with its features and an interesting new mode that will make goalie fanatics want to lace up their gloves in unison. But right off the bat, you can see that NBA 2K6 was given more love, more attention, and this was just a matter of coming up second.

The first thing you'll notice are the game's graphics. Upon close up view, you'll see some of the texture work coming into play, namely on the uniforms. There's also noticeable additions to the ice and the spray of it when it kicks up on your skates, which is good. But the rest of the visual presentation seems to come up short, as if Kush Games couldn't capture the texture magic that their brother developer Visual Concepts could. The people still seem a notch below realistic, and the gameplay from a far-away view runs into the occasional stuttering, ruining the smooth frame rate. Also, the people in the stands still look like unreal figures, trying to run the motions of die-hard Avalanche lovers. The game tries with different camera angles and replays to give a solid visual presentation, but the game could've clearly used some more love.

Then there's the gameplay. Most of it is the same from the original Xbox edition, and that means it's still somewhat flawed. Your players still control pretty good, and on-the-fly coaching made the cut so you can use some creative playwork in order to score your goals, but the game's faulty AI also made it over. At times, the computer opponent will have strange reactions. One minute they're letting you get away with a fast break and defining points in the game rather quickly, and the next they're intercepting passes and playing as if they were a team of Gretzkys, trying to tread the ground that Gretzky NHL 06 was trying to cover on the PS2. For a next-generation machine, you think we would've had an AI with more smarts to its game, instead of something that was letting us getting away with murder one minute and then accusing us blatantly the next.