NHL 09 Community Event Previews

"Fans rejoice, hip checks are now out of the game, which also means the “honing missile” checks are also out of the game! That’s not cool thing, though. The cool thing is that they are implementing the Endorphin physics engine to handle the checks. While it won’t be full “rag doll” type real time physics, there will still be 300-400 different types of checking animations in the game. Sure the checks might be pre-triggered, but from what I saw, the checking looked so very smooth and I saw a ton of variety. When we were there, they told us that they are still tuning the checking engine, though, so it will probably be even better than what we saw. A nice feature about the engine is that if you have some player hot-dogging up and down the ice and skating with their head down, you can really lay them out. It’s not going to be a common thing, but you really have to put yourself in position in order to really lay someone out."

"NHL 09 is coming out with its new collision system! It really makes the game feel like the real deal. If you are playing Chara and hit St-Louis, chances are high that St-Louis will fall down. If you are St-Louis, on the other hand well… good luck with that. The new collision has more depth then it used to; if you're going full speed, you will give a solid hit as if you were standing still."

"We were also told that the A.I is trained by the EA hockey experts. They continuously play the game together, mapping out ODD MAN RUSHES, and defensive position and break-outs etc so the A.I adapts and notices the same situations in game and utilizes the experts information. In english, we were told that the 2 on 1 situations were fixed (whereby the players in 08 would not be in the perfect position for a one timer, or give and go 1-2 pass)."