NHL 10 Review

[RaychelSnr]

Since the invention of yearly sports games and the less-than-12-months development cycles, it has become virtually impossible for videogame developers to fix everything that went wrong with the last version of their games.

Give the NHL 10 team credit, then, for coming the closest anyone’s gotten in recent years to fixing everything that plagued the last version of a sports game -- in this case I'm obviously talking about NHL 09.

Fact is, if you had a problem with something in NHL 09, there’s a good chance it has been fixed for NHL 10:

Read More - NHL 10 Review

[hq3000]

Solid review. I was thinking about picking this up today, but I should only pick up one game today.

I like the idea of be a GM. Its a great feature that shouldn't be excluded from being utilized in other sports titles.

I played a bit of 09 and was severely impressed by the game.. I'm surprised this game continues to improve above and beyond many sports games coming out today.

[notoriouzwun]

Re: NHL 10 Review

Give the NHL 10 team credit, then, for coming the closest anyone’s gotten in recent years to fixing everything that plagued the last version of a sports game -- in this case I'm obviously talking about NHL 09.

I think what I like is that they didn't overhaul. Devs (Especially EA ones) have a tendency to overhaul a whole game every year. I think the NHL crew took what worked and just tried to fix what didn't although many would complain cause it wasn't done in just a patch. I like the formula.

[boritter]

How about a list of all the offline slider changes you made?

[jyoung]

Re: NHL 10 Review

These are the sliders I settled on after about 15 or 20 games:

Game Style: Normal
Game difficulty: All-Star

Game speed: 1
Player Fatigue: 1 click away from max
Player Recovery: 1
Puck Control: 0
Player Acceleration: 0

Pass Speed: down one click
Pass Interceptions: maxed out
CPU Pass Accuracy: 0

Agression: maxed out

Everything else was left to whatever the default setting is for "normal" style.

Like the review states, I basically just put the game on normal settings and tweaked it 'til I got as many problems out of the game as possible.

Aside from a few issues that sliders can't fix, I think it plays a pretty darn realistic game of hockey on those settings.

[kerosene31]

Re: NHL 10 Review

I think what I like is that they didn't overhaul.

Yes. To me, "subtle" gameplay changes can be huge. At least in the demo, hardcore mode felt like an entirely different game.

[PYA-MUSTANG86]

Have they fixed the stat engine in franchise mode this year? ex. goalies getting way too few shutouts, the NHL leader would have something like 3 or 4. Same for save % where there may only be like 3 G league wide with a % of higher then .900. And there would also gbe like 12 players with 100+ points. Has this issue been addressed at all? Cause I know Madden 10's stat engine is total crap. So no real reason for optimism here.

[jyoung]

Re: NHL 10 Review

I didn't run any extensive tests on the stat-simming engine, but here are the stats from the Be a Pro season I completed:

Goals

R. Nash - 51
M. Sturm - 48
T. Vanek - 48
A. Ovechkin - 47
M. Gaborik - 47

Assists

R. Nash - 65
J. Toews - 64
R. Umberger - 63
J. Voracek - 57
T. Vanek - 57

Points

R. Nash - 116
T. Vanek - 105
R. Umberger - 102
M. Gaborik - 96
A. Ovechkin - 93

Goals Against (minimum 30 games played)

P. Rinne - 1.93 (the anomaly, since he was my team's goalie)
T. Thomas - 2.50
K. Lehtonen - 2.55
R. Luongo - 2.59
T. Vokun - 2.62

Save Percentage (minimum 30 games played)

P. Rinne - .917 (much closer to the norm here)
T. Thomas - .914
K. Lehtonen - .912
R. Luongo - .912
T. Vokun - .910

Shutouts

P. Rinne - 13 (just goes to show how pass-happy the CPU offense is at times)
R. Luongo - 6
J. Giguere - 5
C. Osgood - 5
E. Nabakov - 4

[PYA-MUSTANG86]

Thanks a lot. The GAA seem a bit high. Uually there will be around 2 or so G with a GAA of lower then 2. Since you were saying it was only through 30 games, those save % numbers will probably decrease. To where they were in last years game. You would think being this has been an on going issue for pretty much the last few years and on every next gen verson that they would have addressed this by now. Also like I said Madden 10 has a crap stat engine. Where a starting HB (ex. Reggie Bush, Ryan Grant, Darren McFadden) will have something like 500 yards on 200 carries and a 2.5 YPC. Not only would those players get cut in the real NFL with numbers like that. But if they put up those kinds of numbers this year they would all be rated somewhere in the 50's on M11. Yet for some reason they increase by up to 5-6 points. I knew that new "Potential rating was a bad idea. When I 1st heard about the potential rating I brought it to Ian and Donny's attention as a possible problem, and they both passed me off.

[jyoung]

Re: NHL 10 Review

Those stats are all from the end of the season, but I just filtered out the goalies who didn't have more than 30 starts.

All of the goalies in the top five lists started 60-ish games overall.

[jayenomics]

Re: NHL 10 Review

PYA-MUSTANG86 what are you talking about there are usually a few lower than 2.00 GAA? Maybe in the playoffs...no way in the regular season. Last year, out of all goalies with atleast 50 starts, Tim Thomas had the lowest GAA at 2.10. The next closest was Niklas Backstrom at 2.33. Those stats look right on the mark.

[JeffHCross]

Jayson, the NHL team documented several changes they were making with an early patch, based on demo feedback. One of those items was CPU passing. From the videos they shared, it's definitely an improvement post-patch.

[budsticky]

Re: NHL 10 Review

I have been struggling with my decision between this game and 2k10. I can only afford one game and want to make the right choice. Despite your high praise for this game you bring up three points that really are huge sore spots for me:

1. CPU robo-passing
2. Dumb teammate AI
3. Lifeless franchise mode

Being mainly an offline franchise guy I think it's easy to see why these 3 areas are a major concern for me.

I'm anxious to see what you guys think of 2k10 as this site and GameShark are pretty much the only two sites whose reviews I consider to have any merit.

[jyoung]

Re: NHL 10 Review

Jayson, the NHL team documented several changes they were making with an early patch, based on demo feedback. One of those items was CPU passing. From the videos they shared, it's definitely an improvement post-patch.

Given how great the NHL team was with their patches last year, I wouldn't be surprised if some of NHL 10's issues get addressed early-on with patches or tuner sets.

Right now, though, it looks like EA has their hands full trying to fix the overloaded online servers.

Guess they didn't learn their lesson from last year's server fiasco.

I have been struggling with my decision between this game and 2k10. I can only afford one game and want to make the right choice. Despite your high praise for this game you bring up three points that really are huge sore spots for me:

1. CPU robo-passing
2. Dumb teammate AI
3. Lifeless franchise mode

Being mainly an offline franchise guy I think it's easy to see why these 3 areas are a major concern for me.

I'm anxious to see what you guys think of 2k10 as this site and GameShark are pretty much the only two sites whose reviews I consider to have any merit.

We were able to get our review of NHL 10 published in time for launch day because EA was gracious enough to send us a reviewable copy two weeks in advance.

Unfortunately, 2K's game arrived in our reviewer's hands only a few days before launch, so we will probably have to wait until late this week or early next week before the 2K10 review is ready to go.

That said, since there's no demo this year, my experience with 2K10 is limited to watching videos of it online, so I don't have much basis to make a comparison between the two games aside from how they look graphically.

For whatever it's worth to you, I'm still having a lot of fun with the NHL 10 offline modes (mainly Be a Pro) even in spite of its flaws.

There are moments of frustration for sure, but overall, modes like Be a Pro are still a great experience.

[Redshirt_EA]

Re: NHL 10 Review

Right now, though, it looks like EA has their hands full trying to fix the overloaded online servers.

Different teams. I wouldn't know the first thing about how to fix a server problem so I'm still free to work on gameplay fixes.

(BTW, there is a fix already up for the servers, we'll see tonight if it remedies the problem fully).