Tagged: nhl

NHL 09 Online Team Play

Online Team Play got updated to 6 on 6 as opposed to just 4 on 4 in NHL 08. The new mode is great, there’s always someone that wants to play goalie. And it’s hard!

You have two options, as either your created Pro, or with existing teams built-in, which basically range from all of the NHL, Nationals and the rest of the professional hockey league teams. I must say that playing as yourself kicks ass. Nothing beats going in on a break away and scoring and the announcer going nuts about you. The built-in announcement names greatly improved, they even have the obscure foreign names like mine. Seeing yourself in a Flames jersey and playing pro hockey is kind of a fantasy come true.

Everyone’s still starting off so nobody’s got overrated stats and unless you’re a sniper, you’d be missing a lot of those shots. People that knows hockey plays better together than those that don’t, and it’s really visible as far as differences in team work goes. I’ve enjoyed it a lot and play 5 straight games yesterday. Too bad I got owned and only got 1 win. But I did score a goal during 1 of the games. EA servers are still getting issues worked out so apparently none of the stats got tracked. Meh it’s ok, it’ll only get better. I can’t wait to start leveling and improve on that shot accuracy.

NHL 09

And it’s out!

NHL 09 came down the wire last night and I picked it up almost immediately. EA finally fixed the relative aiming! Now when the team goes down (Away in 1st and 3rd period or Home in 2nd period) you don’t need to aim backwards anymore. This has been a long time feature in the 2K series but EA never quite got it right. No matter how good last year’s hockey game was, the Home team almost always had an advantage, unless of course you force camera angle the way you want it. I considered it an unfair advantage since the movement to aim corners for the team going up required less distance to travel on the joypad.

The updated features are nice! I briefly went over the Be A Pro mode and it is quite good. EA made NHL almost seem like a RPG game. I’m definitely drafting myself into the AHL team and play through the AHL seasons to level myself up. I wonder if I have to be in Dynasty mode in order to do that though. Would be nice if I can do it in exhibition games.

The defense is much better, checks respond better and poke check isn’t nearly as annoying and actually requires you to aim. I didn’t use the lift stick button a whole lot. But it should be a nice move when you’re chasing from behind and don’t want to get a hooking penalty. I wonder what else I could have used it for? Someone that plays pro hockey please school me on this.

Offense is not exactly the same old. Deking is slightly harder, you need to be more precise on your movement. Shooting is different as if you’re not hitting up or down precisely, you’d get a imprecise shot. But sometimes if you don’t aim precisely and shoot imprecisely then you get a combined precise shot! It’s a luck of the draw for my at the moment as I only had the chance to play 2 games. Maybe when I get more seasoned it would come more naturally.

I haven’t checked out the other modes yet, but I’ll update on the rest later. Maybe they’ll allow shorter seasons for once? I didn’t hear anything about it in previews so I don’t expect it to be a feature.

I did notice the Historical teams selection in the preview videos. You can be the best Montreal Canadiens ever assembled. It’s pretty awesome.