NHL 13 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360, PS3)

[RealmK]

Quote: Originally Posted by mkharsh33

I saw a cool animation today where Kovalchuk whiffed at the puck BUT very quickly was able to get a quick shot on net. It looked very real. Agree with QB above regarding board play. In 12 and 11, you could EASILY steal the puck away while pinning a guy to the boards - near automatic. This year they've made it balanced, and the weight of the players seems to really matter, along with the ability to handle the puck. I got around 10 more game periods in today, and must say, the more I play it the more this looks like EA's best work ever for the NHL title. I had my concerns about speed bursts from great players, but the puck control isn't overly done once they get the puck and solid defenders seem to be in good recovery position, along with better goalie AI (in which a video was posted here a few weeks ago on their smarter play with regard to player - puck instincts). I've been critical of this title, but with some slider tweaks, I think this game has a 9.0 + rating given to it, and rightly so. I believe in past years this game was overhyped in pre-release magazine / blog ratings. It wasn't until a LOT of people started playing it that the holes in the game became obvious. I only wish I had MORE teams to play with.

I think they changed some of the board pin animations. Or maybe I was just over tired last night, on one pin, it looked like the defender was further back and to the side of the player he was pinning rather than directly behind and on top of him. It looks more organic and tougher to just poke the puck away, body position being important this year.

[mikko1995]

First impression on the game is good; I like it, it feels realistic.

With that being said I find the CPU on Superstar/Hardcore settings a lot easier in the Demo than the NHL 12 Superstar/Hardcore was for me. I'm able to dominate the games with ease, if I do make a mistake, I can always cover them up by myself with a poke, hard backcheck or just positioning myself so I can get a blocked shot. In the offense I can gain the zone easily and then I'll cut to the middle between the D and the trailers, stop and pass to the forward trailing how is entering the slot or wait and pass to the D and start a cycle.

All in all it has been real fun playing the game, sliders will fix the CPU thing I'm sure.

[gopher_guy]

Quote: Originally Posted by Panicshade

They could have at least had 4 teams like the Madden demo. Maybe next season for one of their many vote campaigns like they do with the covers they can ask people what teams they want to see in the demo.

That would be a cool idea!

Have the 2 SC teams, and then have the community vote for 2 other teams to be in the demo.

[Vikes1]

Quote: Originally Posted by Section_25

If the sliders work better than last year we are in for some seriously great games for months to come.

Agreed.

If we can take what we seem to have now, and customize the gameplay to our personal liking with really effective sliders...yep, that'll be huge.

[franch1se]

is there a way when dangling with L1 and hitting a direction to not lose the puck? Everytime I try it always ends up behind me or my guy side steps to the left and the puck goes the other way. I have never used the new controls but I want to try to learn them this year.

Anyways, I still can't score. I have been messing around with HUT and I won 2 games before losing to the Kings in the semi's and the only way I win is in shootouts in way extra rounds haha.

Using HUT, its very noticeable on the speed difference between players and i really like using Stamkos and just flying past the D.

It's funny, the sports I've never played in my life are what I'm the best at (NCAA, Madden) but the sport I have played my entire life (squirts-college hockey) I can't play well haha.

[RealmK]

Another minor fix, if you have a tired forward and D line, changing the forward line doesn't automatically send the dpair off for a change. I can't count how many times I gave up breakaways in 12 vs the cpu because of that.

[kicker]

Quote: Originally Posted by Qb

I haven't gone out of my way to attempt backskating all over the CPU, so I can't speak to how easy it is. However, I'm leaning towards the need for the speed/agility of backskating, and perhaps the speed of transition, to be reduced when in possession of the puck. I'm not sure about without the puck, as that seems like it might be better balanced. But I need to spend more time with the game before declaring that anything needs to be tuned.

You will see what I'm talking about when you attempt to backskate all over the place. It's definitely scary when you do so because the AI defense can't knock you off the puck and before you know it you're in their zone with a shot attempt.

Being a defenseman for thousands of club/OTP games, I realize the importance of being able to skate backwards with decent agility. That said, the fact you can skate up the ice backwards with ease is nuts.

The only remedy I see for this is to tune the game where a puck carrier attempting to backskate is able to be knocked off the puck/off his feet much easier than going straight ahead. This would leave the defenseman out of it since if they were backskating back into their own zone without the puck and they were hit, it would be an interference call.

Another problem with this is that the backskating can be combined with a number of shots that are 100% guaranteed to go in if done correctly. I was able to go 25 for 25 with the goalie while backskating and using a number of shots. If i'm able to do this as a non-glitcher, I will guarantee the true glitchers out there already know about this and will exploit it if not addressed by the development team.

I know this type of information shouldn't be normally shared but this will be common knowlege among the better players in the game as soon as they try the game out. It's better to get it out in the open and have the developers fix the problem before we see this on a daily basis in club/otp.

Anyone who has played this game for a few years and has seen all the BS players pull will take notice of the above. Like I said, I hope they address it because this game has the potential to be incredible.

[plaidchuck]

Well my impressions pretty much mirror everyone else's, but as other have said it will come down to how well the sliders work. Some of my big pros/cons:

Cons:

The AI was business-as-usual bad when using position lock; playing as a forward the dmen and other players seemed to ignore me even if I was wide open for a pass, not sure if playing tendencies or strategy was affecting this. Forwards also went offsides way too much when receiving a pass into the offensive zone (eg. standing just offside when taking the pass). The D men also would either let people waltz right into the slot to take one timers or do the ol' "stand behind the goalie" routine. Pretty sad because if this what the end product will be like BAP will once again be nothing more than a grind in order to not pay for eashl boosts.

Live goalies seem to be gone, the only interaction I noticed is that the skater gets knocked down when touching the goalie, nothing else.

Penalties are borked from the gate, after about 3-6 total hours of playing the demo I have seen just one slashing penalty. Blatant interference, checks from behind and even trips haven't been called.

The backskating. Nuff said.

Goalies seem to be super tough, and scoring seems to be random, e.g. sometimes the goalie will make a save no matter how badly he is out of position, other times a routine shot will go in.

Pros:

Overall the skating is nice and not that hard to get used to. Hopefully this will force players to constantly weigh risks and rewards of aggressive forechecking/pinching versus establishing a good position on both offense and defense. An ice friction slider similar to the one in the 2k games would be nice though.

The new overall and line strategies are good, but this was really one area that could do nothing but improve, same with the presentation.

Player faces look a lot better.

Verdict: Still not enough to justify preordering or a day 1 purchase. GM connected may be nice but other than that I think the offline will be as bad and boring as 12. Hopefully the EASHL will be better with the new attribute caps. Other than that though, I will at least wait until I see multiple reviews of the eashl especially and till they have a patch or 2 under their belt this year.