NHL 11

Got it, too bad online is broken, glitched, and generally an unreliable experience. Don't get sucked into wasting money on HUT, you can just as easily create your team in the Custom Team menu and import it into Be A GM mode...

When EASHL works its fun, but trying to wrangle friends to play with is hard when work/school/family schedules interfere with playing.

Basically an improvement in every way (although, full disclosure, I have basically no interest in playing online). The hitting is so much more satisfying now, and once you get used to the hip check...it's basically sex.

I was super apprehensive about both the new pressure passing and the "hustle" feature - but both have been implemented incredibly well. I love winding up in my own zone with one of my guys, hitting the neutral zone and using the hustle feature to drive wide/split the defense into the opposing zone.

Still getting used to the new deaks. The computer always uses the "kick it from skate to stick" one on me so I think that's the first one I'll try to master.

Defensive AI seems much improved too. Defensemen don't randomly bail on the puck on dump ins etc.

Only minor gripe is that so much effort went into the HUT feature this year and I have basically no interest in that. I would have liked to see a few tweaks to the Creation Zone, especially in regards to teams. They added a few more logos, but I don't see why they can't just add a shit-ton of clip art/team names to the lists. Also, it seems like you should have access to the CHL/European league logos as well. But yeah, minor gripe, great game.

It's a rare occurrence but I also like that they've included video replay judgments on some of the sketchier goals. My first time was a puck bouncing of Daniel Sedin's thigh into the net...wasn't expecting the 30 point achievement when that happened.

Offline is pretty fun. Currently guiding the Moose/Canucks through the pre-season.

Still, it annoys me that they're on their fourth iteration in the series and haven't made strides to improving online gameplay. At least 2K's servers worked when their games came out...too bad they let their series stagnate into mediocrity.

The Faceoff systems is great, but...if there's a way to garner an advantage from seeing what your opponent is going to do, I haven't figured it out yet. It definitely adds more variety to faceoffs, but I feel like it hasn't really upped the skill quotient. I was sort of expecting a modified rock-paper-scissors situation, but the only real strategy I've noticed is that if you're a bigger player, it pays to tie up/stick life off the faceoff and overpower the other guy. Maybe there's more intricacies to it that I haven't noticed yet I guess.

Still very cool though and a step in the right direction.

Instead of adding the OHL and LHJMQ, EA should focus making decent menus. They've been a huge chore to wade through for at least a decade.

Just picked this up on PS3. Who's down for some games?

Let's do it! Shoot me a message on PSN