NHL 10 Community Event Preview (The Sports Game Guy)

It’s time that the community is able to talk about some of the feature seen at the NHL Community Day last week. EA has discussed them on their blog and I also posted up a link to an ESPN exclusive by Jon Robinson last week. What I am giving you here is my quick spin on each of the features.

As far as I’m concerned NHL is a sports game that is right at the top. MLB The Show along with the NHL series are two games that are peaking. When a sports game gets to this point it becomes a balance of fixing things and creating new features that won’t greatly affect the game and how it plays. I think you’ll see with the feature list below that the NHL team has done a good job of this and is highly focused on making the NHL series as authentic as possible.

* Board Play - This is one that makes you immediately think of the EA slogan “If It’s In The Game, It’s In The Game”. To make NHL as authentic as possible this was a must at some point. Littman mentioned during the Community Day that they felt that a real fore-checking game was missing from NHL 09 and this is something they have really focused on. Now the strategy of dumping the puck in along the boards should be more valid in NHL 10. You’ll also want to use board play to your advantage on the defensive end as while engaged EA has intended that you’ll be more protected from getting knocked down by checks.

* First Person Fighting - Over the years of playing Hockey video games 1 on 1 with friends one of the first things everyone tries is to get in a fight. While fighting has always been fun it’s mostly had a boring camera angle and little strategy. First Person fighting takes you right into the action and looks to have a much more strategic approach. Dodging punches and moving your opponent in or out to gain at advantage will make Hockey fighting more interesting.

* Intimidation Tactics – Hockey is a physical sport. That’s pretty obvious watching the playoffs. Teams try to gain an advantage by intimidating the other team through physical play or fighting. A fight at the right time can swing the momentum and EA has made fighting mean something in NHL 10. Start a fight at the right time and get your teams energy back. However if it’s done at the wrong time it could work against you. While at first it may seem that this system will cause more fights but EA says that players will want to be selective and pick fights at right time. Now you know why Zack Stortini was brought in to talk to us for a Q&A. EA has tried to make sure this feature is authentic to the real life NHL. Be sure to check out the Q&A interview with Stortini here.

* Precision Passing – Littman stressed that he wasn’t happy with last year’s “always” tape to tape passing. Also the community has asked for some variety with the passing system. The answer was to add three passing modes with “Hardcore” being the most advanced mode. With “Hardcore” the user will have control over speed and direction of the pass. “Normal” will allow the user directional control which will allow lead passes and will also be subject to passing mistakes. The easiest mode will emulate last year’s passing of tape to tape. Littman mentioned that they really wanted to allow the user more control over what happened but at the same time make it authentic by creating bad passes that don’t always hit the players stick every time. I also noticed that the two higher passing modes allowed for more realistic center ice play.

* Post Whistle Action – Part of the fun in NHL 09 especially in the OTP and EA Sports Hockey league is everyone flying around trying to check each other after the whistle. I see some users complain that EA allows it but bottom line is it’s always there because it’s fun. EA has gone a step further with NHL 10 adding meaning for post whistle scrums. In the NHL and especially playoff Hockey you’ll notice that after every play there are small scraps with teams trying to get the upper hand or just get at their opponent. It’s all about taking your opponent off their game. With NHL 10 many things can now happen after the whistle. Penalties, fights, face washing are now all part of the fun after the whistle. Another cool part I saw was that shooting the puck at the goalie after the whistle will cause the other team to go after that player.

* Interactive Crowds – A lot of things in NHL 10 will get the crowd fired up. The crowd is much more interactive this year. Fights near the boards will cause the crowd to bang on the boards. Fighting will also pump up the home crowd as they wave towels now. The crowd also reacts to how well you are playing. Play bad at home and the crowd may boo you. Make big saves and play great and the crowd will get fired up. Fans also now react to opposing teams stars booing them when they get the puck. The last little cool crowd thing I saw was when the away team takes the puck behind their net there is always that fan that slams the glass really hard one time. It’s in!

So I think you’ll see that everything above is right on track with making NHL 10 as authentic as possible.

Also be sure to check out the NHL 10 screens including 3 new ones.