Goofyballer tho

sigh, such self-fail.

besides huge rebounds i think im a fan with the limited snapshot we have seen...

I'm digging the realism in terms of off balance shots, those shots are way soft, the way it should be

"brwcrw" is our old team name anyway.

I dig the physics. I've had plays where I hit a guy and:

-my guy falls down, bad guy gets knocked slightly off balance but still stands
-both players fall down after i run through a dude, never seen a hit like that in EA NHL before.

Hip checks don't send dudes flying, but i've yet to see a guy stand up through a hip check.

great location cro!

My thoughts on the demo:

- Hitting is much, much better, in that it far more accurately portrays the hits we see on a daily basis in the NHL. NHL11's biggest fault for me from a gameplay perspective was the all too frequent over the top hits which caused everybody to play the game like they were Matt Cooke. With most hits only being glancing blows we'll see a lot less of the overaggression which I think will lead to a lot better online play.

- Shooting is also much improved from what I see so far. Variety of goalscoring was another one of my biggest gripes with the NHL series in general and it seems to have been addressed. Scoring a clean blocker side wrist shot in NHL11 was almost impossible. So far I've scored several in the demo, perhaps even more than glove side (which is generally my money shot). Of course it's just a demo, so who knows what tweaks they'll make to fix the inevitable glitch goals that get discovered and how that might affect legitimate shots.

I also like that when you stickhandle too much or get too fancy your shot accuracy and power diminishes. Another great addition which will make online play more enjoyable.

- Lame demo gripe, but all of the restrictions within the demo are really annoying. Why can I play BAP or Versus on whatever difficulty I want but I'm forced to stay on pro in HUT? Why did they replace the Versus option with Play Now instead of Battle For the Cup where you can have epic overtime games? They should have taken a page out of Madden's book.

- Is it just me or does stick lift suck? I mean it works like usual except after a successful stick lift I get the puck back like 5% of the time. The risk reward just seems terribad with it right now.

- While I'm not one to harp on relatively minor issues, it boggles my mind that there was nothing done to the celebrations except to remove the only one I ever did - jumping into the glass. Disregarding that, how could they possibly think that the current celebrations were good? All of them are completely awkward to watch. Like, wtf? Considering how much time they spend on lame features I would have thought they would have polished the one that gets used more than any other.

- Overall the game definitely feels a lot better, and I do appreciate a lot of the small improvements they made that go unnoticed by many. With that said, until they fix their online servers I don't see myself buying the game.

i like yours too!

whats wrong with their servers?

They blow. I would chalk it up to my connection if every single speed / ping / packet loss / jitter test didn't come back flawless. Plus I never have issues with other games, in fact I played NHL09 pretty much lag free. It wasn't until NHL10 that I started getting a bunch of lag in the form of severe button action delay.

How about the physics on the puck eh? The puck slows down on the ice much like a real game vs. an air hockey table. I've killed some penalties and there are times when I dump the puck out and I'm thinking to myself "Man that puck sure died in the corner there, I LOVE IT!"

I played some HUT last night and I'm lovin the way power players play. I had Lucic shake a check at the blue line, skated him toward the middle, some dude tried to hit him but had zero momentum going, Lucic powered his way through and wristed a nice goal high blocker side.

Goalie interaction isn't huge but it's definitely there. Thomas challenged stamkos on a breakway, i bumped into Thomas outside the crease and wristed it in. Speaking of Thomas, Bieksa shot a slapper wide, Timmie effin Thomas was left hanging while Burrows buried the puck after the nice bounce off the boards.

cro, i count 7 brags in that post

I agree, puck physics definitely seem better. The action off the boards and other missed shots seems more realistic. Basically everything going on around the net just feels a lot more polished. I think it's going to make for an interesting dynamic in EASHL if teams have a harder time getting the cheese wristers off and it becomes more about position in front and around the net to battle for loose rebounds.

Also, I like how you can't get checking from behind/boarding as easily. They simply made the hits from behind against the boards less violent so that you can check but not get an auto-penalty and I love that. Only having the options to either kill a guy or lock him up into boardplay in NHL '11 kinda sucked. Now they let you bang around a lot more and it makes it so much better.

A couple negatives:

-There are times when it's a bit too 'anything goes' style. I've been defending 2v1's and have just planted the guy without the puck and received no penalty. They do seem to let a little bit too much go in terms of interference, if it's anywhere close to the net/slot area.

-After numerous attempts to go offside intentionally with my BAP guy, it appears the skate drag only works for AI and not for your own guy, which is really stupid. Seems like it would have been easy to add that animation for human-controlled players.

When I was gliding over and the CPU had the puck I did the skate drag. Not sure if you can do it with the puck. The game seems to recognize that if you're slowing up it's to avoid the offside.

Another nice new animation is the ability to straddle the blue line when waiting for your teammate to carry/dump it in.

Hmm, fair enough. Never saw my guy do it.

Two other questions...

Does hustle seem nerfed to anyone else?

And has anyone seen one of these yet?

hatersgonnahate.gif

I spotted another glitch I'm hoping they will fix with a patch on retail launch. Kaberle was on the PP and took a shot on net, most unrealistic game of all time. **** EA

Speaking of realism. I nudged a Sedin after the whistle and he stayed up. Come on EA.

hahah

now that this demo has come out i cant even play 11 anymore. it seems so rough and arcade like...

only things i dont like about whats in demo so far...

-in versus mode or play now you should be forced to defend penalty shots and shoot-outs instead of the CPU
-rebounds (need to be toned down slightly imo)

also when playing HUT and up 1-0 on PP opponent would ice the puck with less than 1 minute left without pulling their goalie and attempting to tie it up

-guess thats the AI on pro level??

only 16 more days

Yeah not realistic at all.

Why doesn't Horton put his head down @ the blue line and cry about it?!

Still sour about the loss!

Pumped for NHL 12.... On the fence of buying a xbox 360 to join you guys on the 2p2 team... Top 500 rank 1v1 on PS3 so I should be able to hold my own?

If they let Marc Savard play a single game in NHL 12, throw realism out the freaking window