NHL 13 Review

Returning modes have also been tweaked to offer better experiences across the board, as mentioned earlier. Hockey Ultimate Team, which lets you put together a custom roster of players and manage them based on line chemistry, makes a return. This year’s changes are welcome ones, including removal of career length so that your team doesn’t “expire” after a few games, training has been tweaked to only apply for the single game and not carry over, and users will need to play through three different skill brackets in HUT Tournaments to get to the top. The main interface has also been redesigned, making it easier to navigate. All in all, HUT remains the same but with some welcome tweaks that will likely make your experience with the mode a bit more enjoyable.

Be a Pro has probably seen the fewest tweaks out of any major gameplay mode. Players still have the option to create their own Pro and take them through an NHL career, playing games by calling your own shifts or in authentic mode, where your ice time is determined by the coach. An issue this year seems to be that the coach never wants you to play. It seems that there is a bug where after any whistle with you on the ice, you’re placed back on the bench. This results in amusing shifts that last about a second after jumping over the boards. Needless to say, this seriously hampers your gameplay time and is an issue that should be addressed by the developers soon. Otherwise, your NHL career dreams will be limited by your ice time, not your skills. One good addition to Be a Pro is the ability to request to be traded, though the game first decides on your value and if it’s low, you’re not likely to get offers.

Finally, the other big offline mode Be a GM also returns with a few tweaks. Primarily, players will notice a new trading system which now utilizes a much expanded arsenal of tools. CPU teams will now analyze their rosters and more accurately offer their skaters on the trading block, letting you easily see which players can be traded for more easily. Sadly, this hasn’t stopped the CPU from trying to make ridiculous trades and getting upset when rejected. New this year, when offering trades to the AI the teams will respond with their reasoning and how close you are to getting a deal. Sadly, these canned messages are often cryptic and conflicting with each other. “Yes we are very close on this trade… but we feel the deal you are offering is terrible”. What EA Sports has called GM Brain, a new AI system is used in Be a GM to produce a more realistic management experience. This includes things like better roster management with introduction of player roles that dictate if this is a promising prospect, and established first liner, etc. It’s an addition that plays nicely into the expanded trading. Overall though, Be a GM feels quite familiar and the new trading and roster changes don’t exactly revolutionize the AI that still makes poor decisions.

Having spent so much time on the game modes, of which there are tons, it’s probably time to hit the ice. Unfortunately, NHL 13 runs into further bumps along this road as well. The main big change this year is the new skating engine. What this means, in a nutshell, is that players behave much more realistically now. You can skate with full speed, but taking turns, shooting, or even passing is more difficult to do unless you slow down and go into a glide. Players now have specific attributes such as momentum and explosiveness, which dictate how fast they can skate, turn, and accelerate. So most forwards are quick to skate by defenders if they got caught up the ice, which actually introduces some breakaway problems. It would be understandable if a first line NHL forward was able to outskate third line defenders. But in the game, it’s nigh impossible for defenders to keep up unless they are in the ranks of Chara or Weber, even with third line forwards. More balancing was probably needed to ensure fairness between attack in defense in regards of speed. The skating also feels rough in spots – for example, skating full speed into the boards and then trying to turn still results in an slow-moving turning animation when in fact the player is no longer moving at all. Overall, the new skating engine has a great idea behind it, but the executions falters a bit due to lack of polish and balancing. Though this may seem like not giving the engine full credit, but it has to be said that this type of gameplay was possible to achieve in previous games with some setting slider adjustments.

It also doesn’t help that the hitting physics this year feel quite terrible and glitchy. It’s not clear what happened – NHL 11 hits were overpowered but very satisfying, NHL 12 scaled things back, but NHL 13 simply removes any fun and functionality out of it. Hit a player, regardless of your and his size, and you’ll both bounce off each other in an awkward animation, and the forward might not even lose the puck (or if he does, he’ll get to it again before you can recover from your own hit). When playing against AI, the defenders have been ramped up to have great position, which is fine, but they are also super human at intersecting every pass possible. So forget about trying to run a passing game anywhere but the outside, as all lanes are taken away with unrealistic pass intercepting ability.