Buy NHL 14 - Xbox 360

Customer Ratings:
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Overall it is a fun game, but it does have some frustrating setbacks.

Pros

-3 game modes let you easily set your style of play without using tons of menu sliders (though they are available(

-1 touch juke and spin moves are very easy and natural.

-graphics look good overall, though some player faces are way off

Cons

-I've played every nhl game for the past 7 years or so and the face offs in this years release seem downright impossible. I have literally played games where I won no face off. Wtf!

-defensive AI is terrible and battles along the boards almost always go to the computer.

-the game often tries to keep things even, meaning that if I score a goal the computer often come right back and scores. It just doesn't feel realistic.

AND THE ABSOLUTE WORST CON IS...

-fighting. The fight controls have improved from last year, but the frequency of fights is infuriating at times. There should not be 4 fights in every period of play. It's rediculous. I turned the fight slider all the way down thinking it would eliminate fights, but there are still 3 or 4 a game. EVERY HOCKEY MATCH DOES NOT HAVE 3 or 4 FIGHTS EA! Additionally, the timing of fights is pretty random and unrealistic. With 50 seconds left I'm down by 1 and driving to the net and my player decides to start a fight? Wouldn't happen! Now I get to lose another impossible face off and try and steal the puck back once again.

Do you see the point I'm trying to make here? The base of this game is still the fun nhl platform we've enjoyed for years. But, the irritating quirks often completely ruin the experience.

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I'm a big fan of the NHL series and I've played all of them since '94. This game is amazing graphically and it is one of the greatest hockey games ever. What a nice way to end the NHL on the 360 and PS3 to get ready for next gen! This is great!

PROS:

It has a ton of game modes like Quick Game, Ultimate Team, '94 Anniverary Mode, Be A Pro Mode, Playoffs mode, and many many more!

The '94 controls are back! That means that you can change to these controls and have an even simpler and better experience.

The fights now have Fight Night mechanics which make the fighting experience in the game even better as I was a huge fan of Fight Night Champion and boxing in general so I'm happy to have it there.

The crowd! Oh my gosh what a crowd, "Did I just see John McEnroe at the Rangers game in NHL 14?" I just don't know but the way that the crowd explodes when a goal is scored or when a fight breaks out or clutch moments, it's purely amazing! I can see their disappointment and frustration when Ovechkin scores the game winning goal in OT at Madison Square Garden when I was playing as the Rangers.

Extremely smooth gameplay, the players don't get sucked in animations and it has the feel of a real hockey game.

I also like the screen at the end of each period where it shows the coaching adjustments and the success of each team.

I like the pre-game things that the game does and the introductions of each team as well.

CONS:

-The game lacks a large amount of realism. The game has fights happening like 2-5 times a game. Every time that I get a big hit on my opponent, his little friends shove their gloves in my players face and then take them off and a brawl starts. You can win a fight by only pushing the right stick up or down without using any defense at all! That's just disappointing to see this in a game like NHL 14. Don't you need at least some skill to win a fight?

Cheese. It's my good ol' friend cheese. I've seen cheese in so many games, I don't get it. There is a difference between the AI just getting in a rhythm and just cheese. I playing Playoff mode with my hometown Rangers and we made it to Game 7 of the conference finals vs. the Washington Capitals. It was 2-2 at the start of the 3rd period, one of my players got a penalty for elbowing. So the power play starts. In the first 12 seconds of powerplay we give up a close range goal. I just say, "Okay, we'll come back, it's all good." Apparently it was not all good as we lose the faceoff with 2:48 left on the power play and it's 3-2 and we give up a long range goal this time 4 seconds later. It's 4-2 now and we lose another faceoff and they score another goal in 9 more seconds. By this time, I'm raging. It is now 5-2 and we lose ANOTHER faceoff and we give up ANOTHER goal in 23 more seconds. I don't get it! 6-2, what of a game is this now? We FINALLY win a faceoff but we miss our shot at a goal and they go coast to coast for, you know, another goal!!! I finally can't take any more of this and I quit and it simulates to the end of the game...... Yup! We lose 9-2! Cheese at it's finest. Hopefully, THAT won't come again.

IN CONCLUSION:

This game is a great game for any hockey fan out there and certainly any old timer who have NHL '94 like me back in the di-zzay! This game is amazing graphically and I highly recommend buying this game!

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So first off let me say, i have NOT played an NHL hockey game since they went on strike in '99 or 2000 (can't remember exactly which year, sorry). So therefore i cannot judge from the past 12 years of their games.

With that said, this game however is FUN, right now i am playing live the life, where i am the pro. I enjoy it because i only need to focus on MY character, not the whole team, however on that same note, it annoys me because the team will make random passes or clear the puck way too often, when i am open or they could make a break for it. Sometimes i wish i could just take the puck handler and get it down ice for the score, i've lost quite a few games because my guy would be on the bench waiting for his next shift and the other team scores, then i will get on the ice, get something going, only to get called back to the bench in a few seconds and i have to wait again. However the overall of that feature is awesome, winning and losing does matter, but not as much as your person putting up good points (assits or goals) to impress the scouts and move you up to a better team.

I haven't played GM yet, so i can't comment on it. However just playing the games, are a blast. The hard hits, fights, presentation is just awesome!

Now for my negatives and why i gave it 4 out of 5. As much fun as it is, it can be frustrating, since i am back to being new at this game, i am not on the easiest setting, but one step up, i read others have had similar issues, where your team really don't know what they are doing and won't chase the loose puck, in fact i've passed a puck to a team mate, it bouced off an opponent, but still got to him, only to have him turn around as if he was going to the bench or to be on D so the puck just hit the wall and the opponent grabbed it. Really?! Come on EA, real life they WATCH the puck before they just leave the area to see where it goes. Anyhoo, also, on the lower level difficulty, the rubber banding is annoying as crap, i will score 3 to 6 goals in a game, feeling good, once im up by at least 2 or 3, they will immediately score 2 or 3 back to back to catch up. I've had so many shutouts and i suck at those so far, and then they usually win. I was up 6 to 2 one time, 3 period they tied me and won in overtime, seriously? So yeah be prepared for that.

Finally, my biggest gripe and probably don't matter any many, the menus are nice and options are alright, but clunky. I went to EA's music hub, turned off the songs i disliked the most, and would go to my be a pro season. For whatever reason, all the songs play, even the ones i turned off. In the main menu and normal game, its just the songs i want, but in live the life its like they forgot to propogate those settings over there, wouldn't that have been seen in testing? I guess i would of checked it out first, but thats just me.

Anyhoo, overall, besides my minor gripes, its a fun amazing game. Kills time, when you need time killed ;) And feels great to plow into that guy on the wall, hurt him, then start and win a fight against his buddy ;) 5 minutes well worth it lol.

Honest reviews on NHL 14 - Xbox 360

So far, I've played ~160 games (I had the early release) in EASHL with most being in club play, but a handful of OTP games as well. The good things I've seen so far are that hitting generally works, skating seems reasonably fluid once you have enough stats on your player, goalies aren't making saves they shouldn't and aren't letting in too many weak goals, the new EASHL seasons makes things a bit more exciting, stick lifting now seems to work well enough and not give constant penalties, and that the AI seems to be improving on the offensive side.

On the other hand, it also has a few areas for improvement. AI on D during a rush is almost useless and gives up the toe drag wrist shots from the high slot as it has in the last 5 years or so. On top of that, these seem to be going in at an alarming rate for players who likely are well below having their legend card yet. Larger players seem to have a big balance boost, which makes it nearly impossible to knock down a player more than 4 inches taller than you. Poke checking seems inconsistent. Forcing passes through defenders works too often, and offense seems to be much more able to pick up loose pucks than on defense.

While at first fighting seemed like an improvement over the old system, after getting into a few dozen fights the majority of online players just seem to mash the punch button and manage to win more often than not. There doesn't seem to be much of a way around this either. Using R2 to dodge and counter is somewhat difficult to do, and if they manage to connect with a hit, you might as well just let them win. At least the old system gave you a ton more control as far as dodging went.

More disappointing is that face-off spamming (continuously trying to win the draw before it is dropped, making your character twitch) still works in the game despite countless complaints and EA promising to fix it. As a top 50 center right now with 60% wins, I still manage to have games against these guys where I go 30% while they are clearly exploiting the system. Its been going on for a few years now, and should have been fixed long ago.

Finally a more minor issue is that low speed skating that you would do defensively to get into position and face the puck is more difficult than it should be, and results in too many cases where I'm out of position because the game decided I wanted to do a big spin rather than just turn my hips.

It will be interesting to see how future tuners change this, as EA doesn't seem to have much of a rhyme or reason for many of the changes they end up making, so we could be looking at a much different reaction in 3 months or so.

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Someone really needs to open up a shop to compete against these guys across franchises (NHL, FIFA, NFL, etc.). Back in the 90s EA Sports was a fresh and innovative game maker, now they are innovating for the sake of innovating and their "game improvements" are mostly just gimmicks. This game is pretty much the same as NHL 12 so there isn't really anything better about it, or new, or fresh that the older franchises don't have. You are basically paying $60 for new rosters (this is the case with almost all EA franchises these days).

Funny thing is, they don't even fix the bugs from the old game. In NHL 12 there was a bug that would happen where all the buttons would shut down and your guy would just randomly start skating backward in the middle of the game. You used to be able to disconnect the controller or pause the game and reset the controller configuration to fix it. In NHL 14 this bug is even worse, it happened to me while playing an online tournament against the machine. Luckily the issue disappeared with the end of the period, but it just shows how little attention EA pays to their product development I'm sure others have experienced this and requested a fix. It's two versions down the road and the same bug occurs worse hilarious!

The other hallmark of EA games (both FIFA and NHL) is poor server support. Last night the servers were down randomly for about an hour in the evening and then this morning I got booted from the servers while going into a second tournament game (thanks EA for wasting all my players contract game and giving me a loss I didn't earn for nothing oh and no coin). If you have ever played FIFA 13 you know exactly what I am talking about that was probably the worst sports game I ever played in terms of the glitches. EA Sports is a disaster as an organization and the only way they are going to get the message is for people to stop buying their sub par products year after year like lemmings.

This game's HUT is also sucky compared to FIFAs, the packs don't always download correctly once you purchase them, and the whole interface pales in comparison to FIFA. Now, I get that this isn't soccer, but the whole interface on FIFA works better and is more efficient than the NHL version and the games are made by the SAME DEVELOPER! For instance, it's ridiculous how you have to go through a bunch of different menus to find out who the hell your backup goalie is you don't have to do this for any other position and its absurd. I didn't even know who the hell the guy was until his contract was up. Again, this is still something that EA hasn't fixed from the NHL 12 version (and probably versions that predate that). Basically I can hit Y and see all my lines in one easy interface except for my goalie position. For that one position, I have to highlight the goalie and hit Y, then to replace the goalie I have to stand up dance in a circle, hit X or Y and some other buttons and finally I can replace him horrendous interface and there is nothing on the screen that tells you how or what to do I found out simply by messing around.

Oh and I agree with the other reviewer who wrote that the AI is crappy for lower experience levels. It has been for years. The engineers seems to believe that the only way to make the game harder is to make the machine score on less shots. So basically, as you increase the skill level in this game, all that happens is that the machine scores more quickly, no matter how bad the shot opportunity and he can move the puck easily with none of your defenders being effective at all. It sucks and is definitely the worst of the EA franchises. But worse, I played an online tournament on Amateur on HUT and clearly they didn't match me up with the people of my skill level I got shelled 6-0 by a guy/girl who was clearly on another level. Good job EA, that makes me want to keep playing! The HUT seasons are admittedly a bit better at matching the skill levels of the players. However, the overall gameplay is pretty poor when you aren't playing a friend or the HUT seasons.

Bottom line is that if you want to pay $60 for new rosters and a better fighting experience (NHL 12's was absurd) then have at it. But if you were expecting EA to spend substantial time and effort improving the game experience, forget it just keep playing your older version.