What's wrong with EA Sports NHL Hockey? Pt.1 - VeNOM3099's Blog

VeNOM3099's Blog

What's wrong with EA Sports NHL Hockey? Pt.1

Posted on December 22, 2021 at 04:48 PM.

Hello fellow NHLers, and welcome to a series where we look at the things I believe has led the EA NHL series askew.

Being a longtime NHL fan and an avid gamer and player of the EA series (and 2K series when it was still alive), I feel well positioned to discuss what I think is wrong and how they can correct their direction and right the ship.

When EA first came out with their NHL game, I remember feeling excited

What would the future bring? I couldn't wait for the day we would play something that would be as real as what we saw on TV. Then over the years, as EA would add more features and more options, we'd get to see that future. But something would hold us back. Something was still missing. Even when we went full 3D with NHL'97 on the PC, PSX and Saturn, something held us back from going fully forward. Then NHL'99 hit and it was then I realized what we were missing. What would take this from a videogame version of "table top hockey" into fully fledged simulation

Being able to customize our NHL experience with jerseys, goalie masks, arenas and rosters made the experience so much better. You could even update the UI to look like TV broadcasts and the music to resemble the actual goal horn from arenas!

But again, something was missing. It wasn't something that was visible or tangible, but it was still there. The AI we were dealing with was still stuck in 1991. We had come so far with the visuals and presentation aspect. Yet we were playing, basically, the same game we always had. Nothing really mattered. That's when I became more involved with the NHL community and started to voice my opinion. I started hanging out in forums like Thunderpuck, where I came in contact with people like Pengman, GrogThenailer, WeWantTheCup, Fiddy, WAZ and the site admin Russ. We also had contact with the EA developers once a year who would organize a "Ask your question" chat with the community. It was during the 2001-2002 years where the infamous (to me) answer of "IT'S FIXED!! IT'S FIXED!! IT'S FIXED!!" started me down the path. And I would come to realize that EA would never fix their problems. They would either remove them, only to bring them back later and call them "NEW".

The final nail in the coffin, was NHL 2003 which confirmed what I had started to believe: the NHL series (and the entire sport) was just a joke to them. They were only interested in our money. They didn't care if we play for 3 months or if we played 5 minutes and flush the disc or threw it in the garbage can. EA was all about greed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYPgRV85c5g

Comments

# 1 13whitebread @ Feb 2

I think the NHL series is starting to come along with the new score overlays on the ice but the announcer is atrocious and the presentation is getting quite stale. I am however always hopeful that one day they will give us offline users more of what we crave but as long as HUT is around I don’t think this is possible as this is the cash cow for the series. I will say that the gameplay is improving just want more as an offline gamer of the series only.