NHL 10 Demo First Impressions - TeamLogo's Blog

TeamLogo's Blog

NHL 10 Demo First Impressions

Posted on August 30, 2009 at 02:21 PM.

(1)

Played on Pro/normal yesterday with my clueless about hockey 13 year old brother for about 10 periods, 6 of which were in the same game. Offensively we were pretty poor because he was mostly helpless in the opponents zone, but there were plenty of opportunities. We didn't have a lot of time to create anything with his inexperienced passing. Well placed slap shots were where I focused, with working the edges being so easy. Rebounds were nice and seemed realistic regarding the angles. None seemed particularly AI assisted into someone's lap. (I'm coming from 06's everything to the slot mentality so it looks really good to me.) It would have been nice if shooting loose pucks had more range though. Just getting a piece of a few with a long, quick, desperate and inaccurate chop would have been really helpful. We scored once on a goalie screen from the point and that was it.

Defensively, things changed pretty quickly from sort of tough to silly. 4 goals in the first 3 periods wasn't acceptable so I just let my brother do the puck chasing. I played with the slot as a zone and what resulted was Benny Hill on ice. Pass, pass, pass, with him chasing and me feeling like all I had to do was cover anything cross ice because that puck isn't going to be shot anywhere except from the point and you can't pick but a few passes. Them taking it to the net was mostly out of the question. Against an all AI team they might have looked good, but just waiting for there to be a golden opportunity seemed ridiculous because it shouldn't even have been expecting one. Their only real chances were 1 on 1 versus an AI player in front when I went to play in the corner out of boredom. They scored 5 or 6 goals total with one being a nice redirect and probably all the others having been with a guy basically on top of our goalie. Loose pucks weren't much trouble, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Pro AI was poor at shooting for rebounds to begin with. They were decent at keeping the puck in but it seemed way too easy to kick the puck away from them in board play. Their forecheck seemed to support itself fairly well. Suspiciously, they seemed to get more free on the break when we were tied then when we were down. They were easy to disrupt though.

Something worth mentioning would have been the red line shuffle the AI pulled off. Skating straight from one side of the ice and then right straight back is really odd and tilts toward being buggy behavior now that I've seen it myself. I have no idea what that player was trying to accomplish. Also in the weird category would be my shoving Hossa once after the whistle and then getting hit at least 6 times from in front of my net towards the blue line to the boards, then slammed into the boards. He seems to go nuts and its offsetting minors. After the whistle needs a bit more polish. It could be fun without being a cartoon. My brother won his 3 fights pretty handily, so I'd say Pro level fighting is just mashable.

Overall I think the game played way too tight and disciplined in what is, in reality, an easy difficulty.

Today I started out with the BaP stuff by myself on Superstar with precision passing. Made a playmaking LW. Noticed that my defensemen don't really seem to recognize my existence. I attack a guy along the boards and the D pretty much holds his ground between the puck and the net. I come in on the backcheck and there's no release from position at the blue line so I essentially get picked by my own man. Even worse is that you can use the opponents defenseman to pick their own guy off and then skate past the both of them if the D breaks camp on the line too late. If it would have been 70 versus 90 speed I probably would have been 1 on 1 with the goalie instead of having a half stride edge. Aside from that everything was agreeable to me, but I'm not really expecting the AI to play to my style. I managed three penalties, two being obvious interference and some sort of phantom interference call for the third. Don't have a clue what it was. Maybe I clipped the goalie slightly coming from behind the net while I was going back to defend. Considering that I got called for blatantly plowing people before I'd guess the ref has adaptive AI. Sitting in the box is a better broadcast cam than the broadcast cam I saw online for this game. We ended up going 0-0 through overtime and I won it in the shootout when the goalie missed on a poke check. Had ended up regular time rated A+/F/D but moved that F to a D+ in the end. The positioning rating might be a little softer this year because I only got A+ once in about 30-40 tries on the 09 demo. Got drafted 9th by the Devils.

After this I played for the Cup twice, again on SS/HC, getting outscored 2-1 overall. Offensively there's plenty of room for improvement for me because timing one-timers certainly isn't easy anymore and I don't really have the controls down very well to begin with. Hitting the trailer on a breakaway is going to take some practice. In the meantime there's the puck freedom to make up for it. Seeing a D-man try to swipe my hard but questionable pass at his line and have it chip by him for a quick rush instead makes things a lot more interesting. You don't have to make a perfect play to make a play and shouldn't be afraid to push forward quickly unless you feel weak on D. I didn't have it too easy going through the neutral zone but it wasn't ever the chippy drudgery I feared it might be. The defensemen seemed to give me the zone to the outside even when I thought they had the support to do something more aggressive. I mostly took what they gave me, didn't try anything really elaborate, and had almost all perimeter shots. The goal I got was a low shot off of a block in the slot. Reminded me of 06's tendency to over-commit the goalie to a shot from either side of the point in a save animation that it probably shouldn't have been doing. Shot to the left, desperation save to the left, puck never comes close and block goes to right side in the slot, puck goes right to the back of the net with ease. He kicked low and missed, but I bet Fluery would have supermaned back if I'd have shot high. Oh yes NHL team, I've played your games before. Only problem in their zone was that the AI either intentionally or unintentionally stuck in boardplay once with the puck behind its net. It might have been killing time with the lead but seemed it could have been locked in just the same.

Defensively the AI is lucky I can't get to its passes on the forecheck or it would be in sad shape. It's tragic irony that it tries to beat ME in the ways that I know the AI can be easily beaten. I'm not trying to win sportsmanship awards here. Just because they let me walk in along the boards doesn't mean I'll do the same for them. I know how to hit and they're going to get plastered again and again. Same for the point shots it loves. I know how to get them to the net myself and I'll gladly eat their simple one for breakfast. Rushes are pretty easy to dismantle. They have patience and pass well but lack the will and shiftiness to really force the issue in any play. Like the AI defense, it expects to just work you over eventually in a casual, conservative fashion. It's more than happy to count on being fundamentally better. Pretty arrogant, but things are heavily tilted toward the defense 1 on 1 so why bother trying anything special, right? There's a bi-polarism in the anything can happen loose puck feeling and the AI's game when it has control. There's give and take and then it switches to something obviously mechanical. Both goals came with me being outmanned down low in a mess. Couldn't tell what they really got and I'm not really expecting any pretty goals from the way they play.

Finally, I think that kicking the puck is a little too easy and too strong. It makes passing look weaker than it actually is. I didn't really try start a lot of board play but seeming to not be able to hit someone that's in board play is probably a good thing. It's realism taking a back seat to stop cheap players.