Though 2K Sports NHL 2K9 for Wii is packed with shortcomings if not flat-out flaws, it's still a worthy hockey game purchase for a couple of unlikely reasons. First, it's the first and only hockey game available for Wii -- best by acclamation (or worst, depending on your glass-half-empty perceptions).

Secondly, 2K9 does an ambitious, almost admirable job of employing the Wii Remote's motion-sensitive sensibilities to affect a virtual hockey stick, albeit a seriously foreshortened and one-handed one.

However, it's really just token motion control, so don't expect to rip a MacInnis by hauling back on the stick to touch the chandelier then letting loose with a 105 mph slapper that just might take your Wii-mote strap to its break point. Just ain't going to happen, firstly because it's really just little wrist flicks and slightly-swooping gyrations that control a player's stick. Secondly, the tethered Nunchuk attachment hinders such big-haul wind-ups anyway.

When you're not waggling a wrister, the Wii-mote also acts as a pointing device to select the player (or place) you want to pass to and at that it's pretty effective, novel but enduring even after the novelty wears off.

As accessible hockey goes, 2K9 is competent, certainly playable and quite a bit of fun, especially if the Wii version is your only option. Comparatively, however, NHL 2K9 looks ugly as sin, hopelessly dated with jaggy players in their blotchy jerseys with a tendency to grind in stuttering slow motion when things get busy. There's only a hint of new-generation gloss showing up in the little post-whistle time-killer moments.

Oh, and those little chicken scratches on the screen are called "letters" and they're trying to spell "words."

Pretty bad, even at 420p on an HDTV, but Wii owners are used to the short end of the graphical stick anyway, so there you go.

It all comes off as perfectly befitting the family-fun console; a good time to be had by all... except maybe the hockey fans looking a great looking, great playing hockey simulation.

Editor's Note: Though there are many screen shots available, most of them are not representative of the actual graphics found in NHL 2K9 for Wii; they seem to be doctored or captured from a development machine, not a Wii. The pictures included here are vaguely accurate.