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Vadered
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I know we have a dedicated video game thread, but I thought those of us who are more casual gamers might appreciate this as well. I would think of an awesome joke to start this off right, but I'll leave that to DChero:
Hahaha, that Dchero is hilarious. What a funny person. And topical too! Let's start her off, folks.
Graphics: 8/10. It looks better than 12 did. The crowd is a bit more varied, but still suffers from identical septuplets who all do the same thing syndrome. Some of the new goalie animations look kind of weird (goalies can now move limbs independently of their momentum; last year if a goalie was diving across the crease, his arms were locked in the animation). The players still suffer from CGI people syndrome a little bit, though not as much as the created players will, I'm sure.
Sounds: 8/10. I am digging what I heard from the soundtrack so far, though I know some folks don't like Pennywise. Bassnectar's cover of Bro Hymn is in there, as is Zombie Nation's Kernkraft 400 and The Offspring's Days Go By. The announcers are Thorne and Clement again, and while I love their voices SO GODDAMN MUCH, EA either needs to bite the bullet and rerecord all their dialogue, or they need to get new announcers, because I recognized an awful lot of the lines. The on-ice sounds aren't bad, but the home crowd still probably shouldn't chant "send them home" when the home team is down 3-1 in the series.
Controls: 9.5/10. I'm used to NHL 12, so the first thing that struck me is that skating is so different now. For a more detailed description, let me turn it over to Ritari. Ritari?
Well, there you have it. Excellent analysis. No joking, though, skating is a whole new thing. EA has a fancy name for it, True Skating: Performance is Magic or something dumb like that, but I call it way more realistic. Guys have a lot more weight to them - you can't just hold a direction and then zoom off you go, no, they have to accelerate, which is a new thing for the series. Holding a direction makes your dude skate, and once he's moving fast, letting go of it lets him glide. While moving fast, turning the stick a different way makes your guy turn, unless you forgot to glide first, in which case it makes him Hartnelldown, which is hilarious but not conducive to winning games. You can also skate backwards with the puck, but I didn't do that because it's fucking stupid.
Giroux's enthusiasm in the tutorial videos: -4/10. Dude is more monotone than that sound that happens when you forget to hang up the phone.
Gameplay: 9/10, but tentative. Goalies are assholes now. I played for about 30 minutes real time and only scored twice. Brodeur stopped some really good shots. Mike Smith stopped zero shots. The computer defensive AI is actually serviceable now, in that I don't feel like I'm the only defender regardless of having numbers back. Granted, I only say that since I was playing AGAINST the computer, and I'm sure that given a few months the interwebs will be crushing the AI defenders left and right, but for now it's pretty cool. The slower acceleration and people mishandling the puck more often is actually very realistic - you can't just launch a pass at a guy and expect him to get it, and aiming passes is more difficult than in previous years, which is a good thing. Guys will wave at the puck with their stick when it goes by instead of HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURPing it up - they won't always get it, but it's nice to see them make an effort to earn their million dollar contracts. When you skate full speed at a guy on the boards and try to tie him up and miss, you slam into the boards at full speed and look like an idiot, which is also realistic. It's a lot less arcade-like without being too simulation-like, and that's exactly what I was hoping for.
Realism: 10/10. There are no options which allow you to play the 2012-13 season.
Hahaha, that Dchero is hilarious. What a funny person. And topical too! Let's start her off, folks.
Graphics: 8/10. It looks better than 12 did. The crowd is a bit more varied, but still suffers from identical septuplets who all do the same thing syndrome. Some of the new goalie animations look kind of weird (goalies can now move limbs independently of their momentum; last year if a goalie was diving across the crease, his arms were locked in the animation). The players still suffer from CGI people syndrome a little bit, though not as much as the created players will, I'm sure.
Sounds: 8/10. I am digging what I heard from the soundtrack so far, though I know some folks don't like Pennywise. Bassnectar's cover of Bro Hymn is in there, as is Zombie Nation's Kernkraft 400 and The Offspring's Days Go By. The announcers are Thorne and Clement again, and while I love their voices SO GODDAMN MUCH, EA either needs to bite the bullet and rerecord all their dialogue, or they need to get new announcers, because I recognized an awful lot of the lines. The on-ice sounds aren't bad, but the home crowd still probably shouldn't chant "send them home" when the home team is down 3-1 in the series.
Controls: 9.5/10. I'm used to NHL 12, so the first thing that struck me is that skating is so different now. For a more detailed description, let me turn it over to Ritari. Ritari?
Well, there you have it. Excellent analysis. No joking, though, skating is a whole new thing. EA has a fancy name for it, True Skating: Performance is Magic or something dumb like that, but I call it way more realistic. Guys have a lot more weight to them - you can't just hold a direction and then zoom off you go, no, they have to accelerate, which is a new thing for the series. Holding a direction makes your dude skate, and once he's moving fast, letting go of it lets him glide. While moving fast, turning the stick a different way makes your guy turn, unless you forgot to glide first, in which case it makes him Hartnelldown, which is hilarious but not conducive to winning games. You can also skate backwards with the puck, but I didn't do that because it's fucking stupid.
Giroux's enthusiasm in the tutorial videos: -4/10. Dude is more monotone than that sound that happens when you forget to hang up the phone.
Gameplay: 9/10, but tentative. Goalies are assholes now. I played for about 30 minutes real time and only scored twice. Brodeur stopped some really good shots. Mike Smith stopped zero shots. The computer defensive AI is actually serviceable now, in that I don't feel like I'm the only defender regardless of having numbers back. Granted, I only say that since I was playing AGAINST the computer, and I'm sure that given a few months the interwebs will be crushing the AI defenders left and right, but for now it's pretty cool. The slower acceleration and people mishandling the puck more often is actually very realistic - you can't just launch a pass at a guy and expect him to get it, and aiming passes is more difficult than in previous years, which is a good thing. Guys will wave at the puck with their stick when it goes by instead of HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURPing it up - they won't always get it, but it's nice to see them make an effort to earn their million dollar contracts. When you skate full speed at a guy on the boards and try to tie him up and miss, you slam into the boards at full speed and look like an idiot, which is also realistic. It's a lot less arcade-like without being too simulation-like, and that's exactly what I was hoping for.
Realism: 10/10. There are no options which allow you to play the 2012-13 season.
