While the A.I is still a bit of a slacker at times, the new additions still make this yearly update worth your while.
Good :
- New checking "engine" is great, albeit not flawless. The checks are often brutal, but the physics somehow sometimes interpret the check with a weird way. For example, you check hard on open ice, and the guy falls *toward you*, not away from you.
- UHL is an interesting addition
- A tad more variety on gameplay situations, brought to you by puck physics, goalie skill and activity, breaking and dropping sticks and so on
- The EASHL game search actually works properly now, pretty much the first time in three years.
- Some minor updates, such as the possibility to modify your EASHL player inside EASHL play-mode, locker room is supposedly better now as well, etc.
- The contracts in Be a GM -mode are now more tricky, and no longer you can just build your team via free agency, due real life working contracts
Bad/Worse :
- There's no proper hint (the arrow isn't good enough, doesn't always even appear) that you've lost your stick. I'm fairly sure a player would notice he's not holding any lumber in his grasp.
- Defensive AI has gotten better, but it still isn't very good
- on Be a Pro, most of the time you still have to make the goals by yourself...and apparently your coach still won't like you all the time.
- The loading of the game is coming longer and longer each year
- 3rd year with 90% of the same animations (if not counting the checking things). Getting kinda old seeing guys do same things after whistle blows year after year.
- At least the 3rd year with 90% of the same commentary. Getting boring by now. VERY boring.
- The game crashes quite a bit, in different places as well. So far, with a few tries, we haven't been able to enter Practice Mode on EASHL at all.
- In Be a GM, the rookie classes are always bad. Beyond 1st round, they're most likely totally useless, and even the Top 10 suck even after a number of years. And hence... ->
- We definetely need more depth into the draft. 1st rounders are valued in trades but 99% of them suck. So along with our new Taylor Hall's and Steven Stamkos', we aren't getting any Zetterberg's or Datsuyk -kind of surprises from later rounds, either. Rookies should be exciting, now they're a complete lackluster.
- What the hell happened to the goalie masks? They added a lot of them, but didn't make'em usable on your own guy, and even took off the team-related masks that had been available in the past few years.
All in all, it's still the best NHL game around, with a bundle of additions, most notably the ever entertaining checking physics. While single player folks get some updates to modes, the UHL mode is still this years biggest kicker for'em, almost like a GM mode but with a twist. Additionally, EASHL-people get some fixes (while retaining some glitches with new glitch-goals) and some tuning in the way of more notable play-off's and the excellent addition of being able to fix up your own team's playing gear.