Somebody’s gotta do something. The people at EA have run this franchise into the damn ground. It’s a bait and switch every year because they know nobody else can make an NHL game. The offline modes are essentially unplayable every year since 2019. The entire focus of the game has gone into online modes….
all in an effort to get people to dump more money into a game that already sucks. EA is about money, not the product.
EA don't have the exclusive license but as they know that no other company is making a sim NHL game anytime soon, they feel that offline players will hand over cash regardless of how "sim" the game actually is or it's more profitable to simply wind down that side
This year I feel EA has crossed the Rubicon in terms of a declining authentic experience and how much the old guard of players will tolerate before deciding the game just isn't for them any longer. I'll never purchase this title again until full presentation, generated portraits, proper TV style goal celebrations and net physics are restored to a standard commensurate with other major sport titles. The NHL series has fallen years behind Madden, EAFC and is a decade of incremental progress adrift of The Show and 2K.
24 has made so many downright bizarre decisions that have forced the game in a blatantly arcade direction under the guise of "change"... when really no one asked for a Tunnel of Doom celebration after every single goal for but one example. I'm interested in the reception this year's instalment is receiving but it is quite sad what's happened in videogame terms.
So much potential... imagine if they had some kind of faux Statcast in game. Score a goal, you get the standard celebration which was fine, if in need of some new anims for the NPCs, then in the replay you get a stat box showing the shot speed etc, hardest shot on your team, league wide that season.
It's all pretty simple to code, implement and has high immersion value but instead we get Flex Moments? Baffling to me that someone didn't point out how flawed the idea and execution is for anything outside of microtransaction mayhem... so can only assume that's the goal. Same with having the game ping when passing icons pop up or how they flash because icon passing is on the same input as regular pass just to free up face button inputs for erm... showy dekes? Makes no sense and the flaws of both implementations leap out at you within five minutes of the trial.
There are so many simple quality of life changes that could have been made, a concise score bug in the top left that permanently displays shot totals has been requested for offline since NHL 20 was launched, but the game still devotes valuable screen space to that overly large bar which still exhibits the same patchwork fix that was made 4 years ago when it was pointed out that a fluctuating graphic was kinda distracting on the powerplay.
Yes, things change but the problem is that the things that do aren't the things that need to.
@Rigu7when the game first came out i was excited maybe because they re-implemented 2 replays i don't know but after a whole month playing this game i'm already tired i'm a real hockey fan and i don't feel like i'm playing hockey i can't with this arcade style now i'm back playing mlb the show even tho i'm not a baseball fan and NBA 2k cause these are real simulation games i miss the old days when i was excited to play every single NHL games every year but we took them for granted.Now look at us complaining... its sad.... ☹️
