While I appreciate the sheer volume of content the game has available, there’s got to be a better way to present it to players. Trying to find which mode you’d like to dive into leads to suffering through NHL 20’s cluttered mess of a menu system. "Speaking of World of Chel, there’s a bevy of new challenges and content to unlock this year, but more exciting is what’s buried in its menus: an exciting new mode, Eliminator." Unlocking new clothing, accessories, and emotes gives you a solid secondary reason for keeping an eye on the game’s huge number of challenges. Intro animations and celebratory actions are often hilarious, and watching them play out in-game is a delight. Additionally, while I won’t spoil the guest commentators for you, rest assured there are a handful of fun ones that show up.Ĭreating a player is as easier and more fun than ever too, and choosing from a wide variety of preset faces and hairstyles is just the beginning – NHL 20 boasts an impressively layered style system.Ĭhoosing your casual and professional wear is much deeper than I initially expected, going so far as to have you pick mouthguard materials and colors or decide how much of your jersey is tucked in. This is something EA has purposefully brought attention to as they aim to bring things in line with commentary styles from other popular sports for the sake of accessibility, and I’m all for it. There’s good chemistry between them, and this year’s commentary tracks definitely feel a little less serious than usual. Thanks to the fact that these two are local to EA’s Vancouver studio, we’ve been promised consistent updates to the commentary throughout the year. Replacing them is Vancouver radio personality James Cyulski as the play-by-play announcer and Ray Ferraro moving from third commentator to color commentator. On the plus side, the game’s broadcasting receives an overhaul this year, removing long-time commentator duo, Eddie Olzyck and Doc Emrick in favor of some new voices. "Choosing your casual and professional wear is much deeper than I initially expected, going so far as to have you pick mouthguard materials and colors or decide how much of your jersey is tucked in." Problems like this have plagued the series for far longer than they should, and the workarounds EA keeps trying to employ just aren’t cutting it anymore. On more than one occasion, my AI teammates would skate over to the puck and then decide it just wasn’t worth snagging, leaving it to the opposing team to come along for an easy possession. NHL 20 is filled to the brim with legacy issues like defenders making consistently stupid choices with positioning and players timing passes poorly for no good reason. This year, the addition of contextual shooting makes animations a lot more natural and assists you in shot selection, and you’ll notice goalies also share a considerably wider range of animations and actions.īut these basic quality of life fixes don’t change the fact that we’ve needed a true overhaul of AI for years. I’ve always appreciated NHL’s mostly fluid controls and general accessibility, but perhaps the worst aspect of EA’s annual hockey franchise is that it rarely feels like it makes substantial changes where it’s needed most. Each year tends to bring a handful of improvements, like last year’s excellent addition of World of Chel, and yet there always seems to be so much overlooked in its core mechanics that leave it feeling slightly unpolished.Īs expected, EA Vancouver has promised some much-needed additions in this year’s iteration, but the end result remains the usual mixed bag of fun new ways to play alongside a collection of continued oversights that prove that hockey just isn’t where EA is doing its best work. The NHL series is the black sheep of EA’s sport mainstays, clearly falling behind in both sales and attention in comparison to the publisher’s most popular yearly titles like FIFA and Madden.
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