NHL 13: First Impressions

This is going to be a pretty quick hit but I just want to go over my first impressions of the game after around 40 games played.

Things I like:

• The new skating engine -- feels good and makes you think about momentum by balancing speed versus turning ability.
• Puck chop -- gives you a quick way to move the puck when someone is bearing down on you during a loose puck pickup.
• Poke check -- easy to take the puck away
• Easier to block passes and shots -- easy to take away passing lanes and stop shots

Things I don't like:

• Extremely hard to score -- this is the hardest it has ever been to score in an NHL game to start and there are multiple reasons
• The goalie are all like Johnathan Quick on crack -- they let in basically nothing aside from rebound put backs.
• The easy of blocking shots and passes -- almost impossible to setup any kind of one timer and even then the goalie gets there 95% of the time.
• Lack of penalties being called -- lots of away from the play interference not being called (this is not in front of the net) and you can board people from behind as much as you want and might get a two minute penalty every once in a long while. I have yet to see a 5 minute major be handed out. I suspect they took it out.
• They put the ability to dive into the goalie and knock the puck loose BACK in -- I am not sure how this happens but they somehow managed to put cheesy behavior back into the game that they had removed last year.
• Might as well take the A button off of your controller on defense -- stick lift is pointless now other than for getting penalties, of course the poke checking being godly makes up for this and more.

Other notes:

• They have added hard caps on attributes per skater type -- for example the max you can get in Discipline on a sniper is 80
• Costs for attributes has changed radically from last year -- poke check jumps up to costing over 100 experience per point for a sniper very quickly

I think as everyone gets more cards and boosts scoring will becomes easier but at this point it is like pulling teeth. I have heard that EA is basically taking the approach that they will make the goalies like gods to start and they tune them back to reality. There was a new tuner set last night and I managed to beat a goalie with a regular shot from the slot so there is hope. Overall it is a pretty solid effort and I am hoping it gets tuned to be better with time.