NHL 12 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360, PS3)

[SinisterAlex]

Quote: Originally Posted by RealmK

Holy hell, during a stopage they just broke down a few replays, saying how good Luongo has been in net. Nice!!!

Yup, hopefully it's not just him though, because I've seen him twice and no one else.

[Super Glock]

Really enjoying the demo. How many goals are you guys generally scoring every game?

[FBeaule04]

I've played 2 games so far, 1 locked as a Tim Thomas, the other locked as the RD of the Bruins.

I don't know where to put my fingers on, but there's something about that game that makes it feel different. Don't know if it's the skating who feels less artificial, don't know if it's the AI who is a lot sharper (even if it's not perfect) than in NHL 11 or maybe the hits that seems tone down a bit and not always bone-crushing.

There's some areas that need to be looked at, the intro, cut scenes, etc, looked like it was just copy-paste, but I made so much comments about the AI that it was fun to see the D playing less bone-head than the offense for once.

I'll continue to play it, will try every position, but so far, a lot of what I see is pleasing me a lot.

One thing I notice with the D is the fact they aren't always bent like in NHL 11. They are following the play stand-up while waiting for the rush, and when they come, the guy is in position and play accordingly. That's a nice touch of realism there!

[stew514]

Quote: Originally Posted by Qb

I suspect this is something they will be looking closely for feedback on for further tuning. I can see a lot complaining from those used to the old style, so hopefully they don't go too far back the other way. It sounds like a promising change if balanced properly.

I think slowing down the movement of the right stick was a perfect compromise. Sure you would still lose a bit of speed, but when you aren't able to go left right in a blink of an eye it's not as impactful. When you combine the two it makes playing 1 on 1 defense extremely easy.

[LuGer33]

A few other things I noticed:

-Net physics seem better this year. This is small but kind of cool. The puck seems to react much more realistically when hitting the twine. I was thinking this for awhile then I had the Bruins snipe me in OT and the puck went into the net and died in the very back of it. Like it disappeared into the back of the net almost. I've also seen shots pop out, roll around, etc. Very cool!

-Lots and lots of different shooting animations (saw a nice shovel shot by Sedin on the side of the net) depending on body position. Excellent improvement, just like the varied skating animations.

-There's commentary in the game about how your team has done the past 10 games. Should be cool for offline play.

-On the Xbox dashboard, you can see what mode people are playing again instead of just "Playing Online" or "Playing Offline."

[Redskins Pride]

I was playing as Boston and winning until those dirty Canucks loop glitched me!

Heh.

Seriously though, the demo isn't going to make me NOT buy the game. I'm too addicted to EASHL to pass it up. Although, hearing Gary Thorne's tired *** voice seriously made me consider it ...

[kerosene31]

Just got the demo and played 3 regular games and a be a pro.

First off: I have always felt that the difficulty in the demos is always watered down a bit vs the full game. I know with 11 and 10 the demos were easier than the full game, and I am guessing things are the same this year. I don't remember what year it was but one year we all played on all star in the demo and thought we were good, then the game came out and nobody could score.

Anyway, impressions:

Note: with replays unavailable it was hard to verify a lot of things...

Positives:

-One of my first scoring chances was seeing Malhotra wide open in the slot below the hashmarks. I hit him on the money and he takes a second to corral the puck and the D picks him up. Later on, I hit Henrik Sedin with a harder pass into much less space and he not only controls it but buries it. We've definitely got better player separation.

-It seems harder to skate through a crowd, and easier for a D with good positioning to push a player wide without really "hitting" him. One thing that bugged me in 11 was the players felt super thin and everyone could easily roll off or skate through anyone. In my one BAP game I decided to just run the goalie. Well, by the time I fought through all the bodies to get to the front, the puck was out. Last year I would have "clipped" my way through.

-Puck physics seem better. The puck seemed more lively along the boards. I play a lot of D in the EASHL and BAP and usually I can easily clear most pucks. I noticed more hard dumps in that didn't slow down nearly as much. Hopefully this makes the dump and chase more viable.

-Skating felt a lot better. Definitely more separation between players (still maybe not as much as we'd like).

Negatives:

-Might just be a weird thing, but I had 4 goals in my first 5 minute period, all but one on slapshots from far out. Without replay controls I couldn't check for screens or bounces well. It didn't happen again so maybe a fluke.

-Hitting felt a little weird. At times I was still hitting hard, but other times nobody would go down. In my last game I wanted to purposely get a boarding or hitting from behind penalty, and I could not knock anyone over. Not sure if this is really a bad thing or not.

Overall:

The one thing that I like is that they make hundreds of tiny little gameplay tweaks, yet when you put them together you can so much better gameplay overall. If it ain't broke...

[crayzman]

Loving the game, just lost despite scoring 2 goals because they were both disallowed due to goaltender interference, first one Lucic just bowled over Luongo trying to get past Bieksa, 2nd one it looked like Luongo initiated contact, flopped and got the call.

Pretty sweet and realistic haha