NHL 16 Available Today For Xbox One & PlayStation 4, Post Your Impressions

[Steve_OS]

NHL 16 has officially launched for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Get a few games in and post your impressions!

On another note, NHL Legacy Edition is available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gamers.

[tjung0831]

Played a few games last night after my PS4 digital copy went live and after hearing a lot of the negativity from the xbone crowd , I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. Game looks, plays, and feels much better to me. I'm sure there are things that will pop up but I'm pretty confident that sliders and tuner settings will make this the best video hockey game we've seen yet.

[Madwolf]

Initial impressions are pretty good.

Visially it's mostly the same, may be slightly better. The arenas are more immersive, and the mascots and different crowd interactions are a wonderful touch.

The gameplay is different for the better. Passes are more about technique and distance now. Your less accurate on tape to tape passes. The puck is more lose and authentic to real hockey, but there are no stick collisions so you can still drag it a bit through traffic and in piles of people, but you're generally punished for it.

The players have more weight to their skating similar to past gen.

Poke checking is effective when timed right, but less effective when spammed.

Defense is a ton better, as pucks won't sail through sticks and skates for one timers. This might be a little too good, because there isn't much player interaction to it, just being in good position, which I'm fine with. That being said you should have less help at higher skill levels and online.

Shots are less laser accurate and you have to use slappers further out or the puck will lose velocity and be easier to stop.

Screening the goalie is more effective.

Goalies are overall improved and let in very few shots they're square too. You really have to move them around.

The AI is better but still not perfect. They tend to chase too much and are liable for cross crease passes if you don't block the passing lane yourself.

Penalties are hit and miss. After the tuner update you see a few a game with the max slider, but I'd like to see more without touching it.

[Madwolf]

To give an example of improved goalie play, with Vancouver I let in only 1 goal on 22 shots when playing good D in front of Miller.

Playing bad D I got lit up 5 times on 24 shots with Markstrom. That's not quite as good, but he's far worse ratings wise, and I played horrible in front of him.

[BL8001]

3 minutes of NHL 16 xbox one gameplay. Predators vs. Bluejackets.

This is on pro default. Nice short handed five hole goal.

[Money99]

Quote: Originally Posted by BL8001

3 minutes of NHL 16 xbox one gameplay. Predators vs. Bluejackets. This is on pro default. Nice short handed five hole goal.

Nice stuff!
When you were controlling Eric Nystrom, it looked like he was about as quick and nimble as a cement truck with a full load.
Early in the clip, you also were controlling Bourque who looked as if he were way more agile and quick.
It’s nice to see the separation more clearly.
But I hope the same can be said for the CPU.

[Drakar]

NHL 16 AI in a nutshell

http://xboxclips.com/Symtex/25eaf744...9-72438e81e81e

Need I say more ?

[BL8001]

Couple of other little things;

The in-the-net cam has an amazing glaze on the lens from the melting ice spray. Just like it looks on tv

When you are the away team you will usually see a couple of your fans wearing throwback/classic sweaters

The higher up behind the netting camera angle is cool

Going into the 3rd period at san jose when I was the wild vs the sharks I was down 3-1. Before the faceoff the presentation camera did a sweep from high to low of the crowd, then did another high to low sweep from another angle. Everyone was sitting there complacently because their team was up 3-1. It looked scarily real.

I have seen a decent amount of broken sticks and they stay on the ice until a stoppage in play.

Had the net dislodge during a cpu offensive onslaught and one of the forwards skated by and quickly whacked the crossbar in frustration

San Jose players coming out of the shark mouth

I will say that I am having fun with NHL 16. 15 was ok but yeah we all know. 16 carried over a lot of the gameplay issues but last night it really played the best it's played in a long long time gameplay wise. What happened exactly was I tried to play a friend online, we could not get the connection to work so I backed out, when I backed out the game prompted me about a gameplay update. I said ok and played an offline match and it was CPU cheating free. There was none, zero. When I go look at the gameplay versions I have Latest and 1.00 which is not a change. It looked like that before last night.

So I am going to assume the previous Latest gameplay was a mistake, with the rampant cpu no look passing and your cpu skaters skating the wrong directions, and they updated it by overwriting "Latest" to a much better playing game.

The other thing is a who knows...the EA servers were disconnecting and reconnecting frequently last night. So did the gameplay improve because I wasn't always connected to the EA server?

I don't know. It's a complete mystery.

I just hope the gameplay I experienced last night stays around and is given a gameplay number when they add the next gameplay update so I can go back to it if necessary.