NHL 12 Videogame Review

Review by Colin Moriarty on http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/119/1192229p1.html

I love sports, but my favorite game is hockey. I played in leagues year-round for most of my childhood and teen years. I went to a university that loves its hockey. And even if they haven't won a playoff series in nearly two decades, I follow my beloved NHL team with considerable passion. I've lived and breathed hockey since elementary school. But in recent years, I gave up on EA's NHL series as a supplement to the real thing, not because the games are bad (they most decidedly aren't), but because my gaming attention in the fall and winter of each year increasingly went in other directions.

So I was quite excited when IGN tasked me with heading up NHL 12 coverage, because it would give me a great excuse to jump back into the series I loved back in the day. When I first saw NHL 12 earlier this spring, the producers impressed upon me the many new features in the game that weren't in NHL 11. When I went back to mess around with NHL 11 for context, some of these new features were more apparent than others. There are a lot of little touches here that fans of the sport will appreciate, like the loss of a helmet after a big hit or a goaltender protecting himself after getting rammed in the crease. The benches are even populated by the actual players who go on and off the ice during the course of a game, and not just placeholders. Little touches like this combine with the series' famously deep gameplay and myriad mode options and help make NHL 12 great.

In NHL 12, battles in front of the net can become fierce, with large, stay-at-home defensemen dominating smaller centers until the spry forward can shake loose and deflect a stray puck towards the goal. Players can interact with goaltenders more than ever, and goalies can even drop gloves if the situation calls for it. And "signature traits" have been introduced, trying to tie the known tendencies of players to their digital personas. If a player is known for amazingly-accurate one-timers or has the ability to set amazing screens as a defenseman launches a puck into traffic, you'll see those kinds of maneuvers mirrored in NHL 12. Combining all of this with NHL 12's core gameplay -- which is excellent -- gives gamers plenty of reasons to drop their hard-earned cash.

Of course, NHL 12's gameplay could use some improvements. There are little touches that make the game feel inauthentic. Your computer-controlled opponents pretty much never ice the puck, go offside, or make other mistakes that are fairly common in any given game. Penalties are too rare, but when called, the refs have a single-minded obsession with interference. Pucks barely ever leave the ice surface and fly into the crowd or the benches for a stoppage. And NHL 12 felt like NHL 94 in terms of how easily a savvy player on my squad like John Tavares could score on a wrap around, whether with a forehand or backhand shot. These are all minor gripes, but these problems (and others) can compound and detract from NHL 12 feeling as pinpoint authentic as it could have been.

Thankfully, NHL 12 looks great, with a keen eye towards television-like presentation. Unfortunately, animations can be extremely stuttered and clumsy at times, though this doesn't detract from NHL 12's gameplay. In terms of commentary, Gary Thorne and Bill Clemente return, and I enjoyed their announcing. Commentary hiccups persist, however, especially when Thorne and Clemente judge you or your opponent's performance. If you're not getting a lot of shots on net but the game remains close, you could be judged as being ineffective, while a goaltender that lets up two or three goals but still has a solid save percentage may be considered weak. Yet another minor series of asides.

But where NHL 12 really shines -- and I mean really -- is in terms of how much game you can delve into. There are more options and gameplay modes in NHL 12 than you'll know what to do with. Obviously, mainstays of the series return, such as season and playoff modes. And more recent additions, like Be A Pro, also return. When you combine the new Be A Pro-like addition called Be A Legend -- which allows you to play as some of the NHL's greatest players -- you'll realize that one could easily spend hundreds of hours with NHL 12 (if not more) and be totally satiated with the experience. After all, these modes aren't all about playing in a vacuum, but sticking with your player for in-game years while upgrading, fine-tuning and honing everything he does.

Admittedly, NHL 12's more ancillary modes -- Be A Pro, Be A Legend, and even the online portions of the game -- interested me less than the game's more basic functionality. I really liked delving into a season and playing through games as well as dictating the moves of my team as general manager. But for those who love creating a player (or playing as one of the NHL's established greats), Be A Pro and Be A Legend are NHL 12's most engrossing and immersive experiences. I created a character in the Canadian Juniors at 16 years old, and if I played my cards right, that player would one day be drafted by an NHL franchise and reach unforeseen levels of greatness. If that player lasted 'til the age of 40, I would have played in well over a thousand games, upgrading my player's statistics all the while as he climbed from obscurity to superstardom. And choosing Jeremy Roenick in Be A Legend mode was really cool, too, especially because I inserted him on the 2011-2012 Chicago Blackhawks, where he proved to be a surprisingly good fit years after he departed the team.

Closing Comments

NHL 12 is a huge game completely jam-packed with modes and gameplay features. Naming them all and going through everything would take this review into New Yorker Magazine word-count. And that’s a good sign, especially for fans of the series and of hockey in general. If you purchase EA’s NHL offering yearly, keep on keeping on. And if you’re like me, a fan of the sport who has strayed away from the series in recent years, NHL 12 gives you plenty of reasons to get back into the game. NHL 12 has its problems, to be certain, but most of what it does it does so well that the series persists as a fan-favorite nearly 20 years after its introduction.