Yaaaay!

CoopBob was right all along! He's been calling this for weeks now. Thrilled with this, should be fun. Hopefully I don't choke on the open net.

Hmm... this looks interesting. Last time I bought a hockey game was like 5 years ago or so...

Oooh, I like the co-op vs. AI online season. That is a great addition that sure took long enough to come out!

I just hope they took time to polish the base mechanics of the game this time instead of just adding extras. The hitting animations/ mechanics and defence AI in NHL 12 need some serious work.

@R2JUGGERNATE, Yeah last year was the first half of their implementation of a new physics system. They are at least claiming that a lot of work has gone into hitting and the new "Hockey IQ" for the AI is one of the features being marketed as well.

Of course this shows one of the main problems of annual games - improvements are always done as baby steps each year. NHL12 was better than '11 which was better than '10 and '10 was worse than '09.... but it always feels like 2 steps forward, one step back.

--- Replying to CoopBob -----

Agreed... And to be honest, while they have made some AI improvements in the last few years, I think the hitting looked better in '09 than it did in '12.. For one year, I'd love to see the announcement that they weren't going to add anything new, but instead they were going to pour all of the man-hours into tweaking and fixing what's already there. For example, it's annoying that the only way EA makes 'harder AI' is simply by making your team's stats worse than the AI's.. Instead of the opposing AI actually getting smarter with difficulty level, they simply check harder, skate faster, and shoot more accurately while all of your team's stats get tanked. The result is a ridiculously frustrating and unrealistic experience where you are somehow out-skated and out-muscled by every member of the opposing team regardless of who you are using.

I understand that the best way to encourage the release of better annual products would be to stop buying the slightly-altered games year after year. The problem is, since there is tons of room for improvement, something in me really wants to buy the new game when it comes out in hopes that more issues will have been addressed. I always know deep down that by funding them, they will continue to put minimal effort into the new installments, but I'm usually fed-up with the last year's problems by the time september rolls around, and it's tough to flatout ignore that hockey itch..

--- Replying to R2JUGGERNATE -----

Oh my goodness, yes! The cheap sports AI of just making my team suck more to increase the difficulty drives me bonkers

And sports games are the worst because each year you think, well the game is great if they just fix "blank" so I have to buy next year's because it'll be better.... NHL12 was going to be my last new purchase of a hockey game for a while and then they started talking about this online co-op stuff and guess what? I'll be first in line to buy '13....

--- Replying to CoopBob -----


XD Yup!.. I'm still in denial for now.. but something tells me that when the NHL season starts rolling, I'll have to go pick one up.. (part of my problem is that I'm a flames fan.. I usually get so annoyed with the effort level of the team that I have to bust out the game just to see my team's colors actually doing something useful haha)