NHL 11 Hands-On: Yes, It's Still Awesome

[UwantRadie]

It should be noted (as it was in a thread) the this build at E3 is running with the hits amped up more then they will be in final release. They did this on purpose to really highlight the physics engine.

Someone here on OS said they saw about 8 hours of the game and didnt see the same hit twice... and that is with the hits amped up? Nice.

[Randiesel75]

Excellent write-up, well done Chase.

[Mikey88]

Sounds like things are shaping up well! Thank you Chase!

[slickdtc]

I'm loving the news about broken sticks and the situations they create. Really cool how they didn't just add in broken sticks, but did it right by allowing you to get a new one, take a teammate's, roll without one and push the puck with glove or skates, and have that broken stick impact the actual play on the ice. Which, much to my father's chagrin, happens too often in the NHL [he always complains that the linesmen always leave broken sticks out on the ice even as play moves away from where the stick is].

I'm coming from NHL 2k10 to NHL 11 this fall, and the news about the game feeling more organic with more deflections and more realistic tuning of goalie rebounds and whatnot is great. I love that it seems anything can happen when I'm playing 2k10, and I've heard around that NHL 10 can feel a bit robotic/scripted at times. Anything to make the game feel more natural, more realistic is good by me. I'm very excited to delve into the EA NHL series after a long time away from their product.

[Bama83]

Glad to hear the checking was over-amped for the demo, rather than this being the norm. I am worried that there will be too many big hits already - as NHL2010 has too many.

I guess I'm already looking forward to NHL2012 when we can have ice physics and skating tweaked to a more realistic standard. If we had that in the game, a lot of these "dekes" would be as needed.

Defencemen in this game are expected/rewarded for playing like linebackers rather than sound positional hockey. I know that EA wants to inject a bit of excitement, but it's ridiculous.

[Qb]

Quote: Originally Posted by Redshirt_EA

One note is that what they are showing at E3 has the hitting amped up because they want to make sure people see the new physics on the players. There will still be game styles so you can play with exaggerated or realistic hitting and the online settings will be much more towards the realistic end of the spectrum than what Chase saw.

The Legend returns!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that we were able to play the game with the hitting toned down on the second day build if we switched the game style. I saw many more glancing hits/collisions and fewer "big hits", and best of all, the damn stumble animation that prevented you from doing anything with the puck is gone!

[sroz39]

Since I am about a 90% EASHL player and 10% offline, I'm all for whatever combination of hitting, poke checking etc. will reward the defence for playing sound positional hockey. The last couple of years, if a guy put his Puck Control somewhere in the 90's, it was next to impossible to take it off of them and you'd often see sticks go through the puck or even limbs go through the puck. If it means the hitting is a bit ramped up online (see: NHL 09) I'm all for it.

Once the game is fully physics based, I'm sure alot of these problems will disappear. Until then, reward solid defence online. I can make the experience as realistic offline as I please with sliders. It's online I'm concerned about.

In all honesty, I trust this dev team more than any other out there to make this game better every year. They are truly awesome. Everyone complains about this, that and the other but I know personally, from September to March, I've played the NHL game the last two years exclusively in that timeframe, which is pretty remarkable when you consider all the great games that come out in that time.

Thanks for the impressions, Chase.

[PBlast]

Can't even handle my excitement for this.