Review | NHL 12

The lure of Ice Hockey to New Zealanders is plain to see; the hits and the fights are a very real part of the sport and sometimes when you’re frustrated playing a new sports sim, picking a fight feels good. EA Sports’ NHL 12 hasn’t had to pick a fight with anyone over its dominance of the sports sim genre. It’s a beast that just keeps updating. The case I’ll put forward is why do you need to go out and get it if you don’t know that much about ice hockey?

When I first turned it on I found it’s a cross between the complexity of Madden by learning new controls for the first time and the free flowing simplicity of the FIFA series. I turned it on learned the necessary buttons like shoot, pass, and poke and of course hit and punch. There are many more techniques and tricks to use for the initiated and the nuances of the sport that would be commonly used by more experienced NHL fans are to be learned later as far as I’m concerned. I did however treat it like playing FIFA, learning angles, spacing and covering sweeping attacking moves from the opposition.

My first games were the Winter Classic that was on New Year’s Day this year between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals. Outdoors in an NFL stadium in Pittsburgh, it is a made-for-TV gift from the NHL with two of the teams that have the biggest stars in the game in either side. It’s safe to say I chose to be the Caps superstar Alex Ovechkin for the entire game. This meant I won more than I lost as my teammates scored the goals while I sort of helped.

Being the first time I’ve played this game I don’t have previous incarnations to compare with but NHL 12 has everything you would expect an updated edition from EA Sports to have. EA have reportedly made over 300 gameplay refinements, including key innovations in ‘anticipation AI’, the full contact physics engine and the addition of smarter, more dynamic goalies.

They’ve also including something borrowed for the 2K NBA series with a legends mode called ‘Be a Legend.’ Michael Jordan was featured in 2K’s NBA 2K11, and in NHL 12 you can play as Ice Hockey’s Jordan, Wayne Gretzky. Not as cool as recreating some his and his contemporary’s finest moments but it’s nice to have the names non-hockey fans might have heard in a game that may feel a little alien to some. Especially since it’s a new sports sim to me it helped bridge the gap. The tutorials are quick and simple and if anything are maybe a little too quick and simple. This is definitely a game you want to have the instructions booklet on your lap for help if you want to jump in right away.

Overall NHL 12 did make me go ‘wow, this is a cool game’ and has me playing it more and more but if you’re planning on buying this or FIFA then I suspect you’ll go with the latter. But NHL 12 is fun, easy to play (yet tough to master) and if you ever get frustrated with it you can always go online and pick a fight.  [8]