Pucking Ridiculous: Your NHL 11 Experience

[RaychelSnr]

This holiday season I'm interested in what kind of experience the community has had with NHL 11 to this point -- a community roundtable, if you will. Now that the game has been out for 90 days or so, I think we have had ample time to see what NHL 11 is all about. And since this is my column, I suppose I'm both privileged and obligated to go first.

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[Nickflyers]

My experience has been great. I'm easy pleased when it comes to games so this game is win-win for me. What's new to me is taking an up and coming team. Usually I'd take the Flyers and win cup after cup after cup, but now i'm playing as the Predators and got knocked out in the Conference Finals. The Ultimate Team is a cool feature too as I've put ample time into that mode too. The only thing that is lacking in my experience is the BAP. Oh what a great game this is!!

[Uncle Stumpy]

11's ok. When I got it I thought it was a slight improvement over 10, but very slight. But then Istarted playing UHL, and I'm very addicted to it. I'm offline with my machine now, and I'm having a hard time getting into franchise or be a pro. One thing I'd like to see for UHL is every time you beat someone, you get one of your opponent's cards. Just to even it up a little for the guys who like building the team from scratch and not wasting their money, like myself. Would also like to see UHL be offline because I haven't played online in a couple months and I'm going nuts without it.

[superbus]

It's a disappointment for me. I couldn't get over the bugs - both the ones that have been fixed and the ones that still exist, including some that have been there for *four years running* - and the fact that the game has become even worse in terms of arcade hockey in terms of how hits are given. And when the hell are they going to fix that wraparound issue?

At a time when these games need more staff on them for quality assurance, EA's firing people at EA Canada and giving them less. They know the money's theirs already, and are shorting their fans. It's been epidemic in all of their games this year, including FIFA. They're really losing my faith.

[Jgainsey]

I was also really excited leading up to the release of '11. When it finally dropped I was really sucked in by the Ultimate Team thing. I had originally scoffed at the idea of something like this, but I was hooked from the get go. It was surprisingly addictive, and I found myself playing this mode almost exclusively for the first couple of weeks.

Though once the newness of HUT wore off I found myself increasingly annoyed when playing teams against guys who had poured dollar after dollar into this mode. I couldn't get into the single player aspect of HUT, and I refused to spend more than a couple of bucks on this mode. Not sure if there's a solution to this, maybe a league or something for the non-paying players, I dunno. Anyways, I stopped playing HUT after a few weeks and really haven't been compelled to get back into it since.

Once I finished my quick foray into Ultimate Team gaming, I headed off to the friendly confines of the GM mode. Only this year we could no longer share rosters. If this isn't the kind of move that makes hordes of sports gamers around the internet hate EA, then I don't what is. I'm not really going to go into this anymore, but it is complete bs, and I was extremely disappointed.

Anyways the pre-patch experience was good, but ultimately, it wasn't good enough to keep me from spending my sports gaming time with NBA 2k, and others instead. But now that I've spent a little time with the game post-patch, I'm definitely back. I'm sure I'll probably play a season or two in my GM mode before it's all said and done.

I guess it didn't quite live up to my expectations, but it is still a pretty good effort from EA. Though with other games stepping up, it's not quite the standout it was in years past.

[H to the Oza]

Disappointing. Not as fun as 10. Only play online so I cant fix lots of stuff with sliders.

What I dont like:
Losing the puck too often on the simplest of moves
Getting stick lifted when my stick is on the opposite side of my body from where my opponent in trailing me
Own players getting in the way of passes
Some passes are too soft, some passes are too hard
Lack on interference calls
Lack of AI in teammates im not controlling (dont go for pucks, poor offensive angles)
Goalies playing puck too often
Player catching an edge and just laying there (This is the pros ITS THE BEST ICE IN THE WORLD players arent gona fall that often!!!)
Getting slashed and giving up on the play
Cant switch to certain players sometimes while playing with human teammate

What I do like:
-physics
-tonned down effectiveness of the pin
-faceoffs
-and the overall gameplay minus the above

[DJ]

I definitely went through buyers' remorse with this game. Honestly, if I had to do it over again, I would've held on to NHL 10 and waited for NHL 11 to go on sale before picking it up. While I do like the upgrades to the game, there really isn't a huge difference between NHL 10 and 11.

Like you, Stephen, I had gone weeks at a time without playing NHL 11 pre-patch and I also took several days to download the patch. I am enjoying things more now that the patch is out but still, I'm having a hard time getting into this game. Again, this could be because I played so much NHL 10 last year and put my basketball gaming on the back-burner. This year it's the opposite as NBA 2K11 blew me away and if forced to choose between the two, I usually go with NBA.

So for now, I'm grabbing a game of NHL 11 here and there and enjoying myself. I'll probably dive into this game more over the winter but for right now, it's a secondary option.

[H to the Oza]

and to add to my previous post, I will this game is heading in the wrong direction