8/20/09

NHL 10 Demo: First Thoughts

Well August 20th is the new Christmas. The NHL Demo came out this morning and here are my thoughts after playing through a period of Be A Pro on Hardcore settings as a RW Playmaker:

The Upside:

- The new passing is as advertised; a lot harder to connect a tape to tape pass, but the possibilities are limitless with more control over the power of the pass.

- I completely forgot about the slowing down of the speed of play because I had so much more control over my player.

- The goalies animations are impressive and they follow the puck much better. I have already seen a "bat the puck away" desperation move that was also batted out of the zone out of the air by the defenseman

- The puck stays loose and the physics are no longer run by the players' internal magnets. There were a lot of realistic goal-mouth scrambles that didn't always turn into a goal.

- One of the two goals I scored was a sweet cross crease one-timer that was setup from the opposite corner from behind the net, that I didn't have to call for. The offensive awareness of the AI has improved a great deal

The Downside:

- There's going to be a massive learning curve for me; the passing, while awesome, will take a lot of getting used to

- I got a penalty using the new "mush the guy in the boards like NHL 2K3" feature, for doing it 3 seconds after the puck left the area. DO NOT mash on the Y button until it works, you'll get burned

- I will miss destroying guys with a cross-rink hip check; the hit assist is gone

Remember that all of this was one game, before work, on Hardcore. You can play however you like. You can turn down the new features and all the 2K veterans will cream over the sliders for all the effects of the game. I have no real negative comments on this Demo so far. I will play a tonne more in the next few days. I probably won't do another review as there will be eleventy-billion out by 5 pm today. I cannot wait for the full game(and of course October 1st Leafs vs Habs!)!

{edit} Oh Yeah, I got drafted 10th overall after the game with A+ Position, D+ Teamplay and A+ Stats. Started the game ranked 15th overall. The D+ Teamplay was helped by the penalty taken for smooshing a guy agaiunst the boards without the puck

5 comments:

AP said...

I just wanna know if you can fight taxi drivers???

Redonred said...

LOL good call AP
I'm pining for this game nhl09 has been broken for months. I die a little everyday......

Diesel824 said...

haha I must have spent atleast an entire week (168) hours last school year playing NHL 09.
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Hyaena said...

I'm interested. Do you have an email address I can contact you at?

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