Immediately after inserting the disc in the tray you have to pick your game save settings, and the new option to transfer your old NHL 11 profile to NHL 12, and excellent feature for fans of the series, soon after we assume it will continue into the flashy introduction video endemic to EA Sports titles—which I enjoy by the way—but as you are watching the video you see snow flakes start to descend out of the blackness, then you realise it is showing off the new Winter Classic mode which when the intro is complete you drop right into the Washington Capitals versus Pittsburgh Penguins 2010-11 Winter Classic match at Heinz Field home of the Steelers.
Now I’ll take you through the new game mode selections and features on the main menu. First things first, you have a NHL12 “news” box in the top left of the main screen, which when connected to Live shows you news about the game and allows you to download “tuners” EA Sports equivalent of patches, it lets the player know if you’ve unlocked any in-game content for completing the prerequisites—anyway enough with the boring stuff.
At last, back to the Winter Classic the long awaited addition to the 
franchise. At this point into the game I will assume that most of you have at least had a glimpse of the game mode, which is fine as there really isn’t much to it. The player can either play the real matchup from the 2010-11 season, or they can opt for two teams of their choosing to play the outdoor versus play match at Heinz Field. It was quite exciting at first with all the snow falling the huge crowds and the colors of the outdoors, an awesome change to the game type but the lack of online play for Winter Classic really changes my opinion of the overall enjoyment of this new feature—playing the computer AI is really boring after a while—but anyway it still is a noteworthy addition to the franchise.
Next on the list of all things new on the NHL 12 main menu, is the historic compliment to Be A Pro mode is the all new Be A Legend mode where you can pick the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Patrick Roy, Börje Salming and countless other legends. Not much to say about this game mode other then that you can be previous hockey greats, the reason why I said, “compliment to Be A Pro mode”.
Now at last, the review of the game play as come upon us. Most of you know that EA Sports games are filled with bugs and annoyances, not that you can blame them it is very difficult to make a sports game of this magnitude have absolutely 100% no glitches or discrepancies, but NHL 12 is by far the best of the series, the folks over at EA Sports really polished down the errors. Mind you this does not mean that they are gone but it means that they are at the least not so frequent or as bad like previous games. Most of the “glitches” can’t be seen in the regular fast paced gameplay, unless you are in the instant replay (now with buffing sounds), examples of the aforementioned physics glitches would be sticks going through bodies, skates, sticks, nets, posts, and boards, things of that nature, with the rare puck through the mesh goals.
The body to body contact is much more realistic this time around, meaning that you can no longer just fly around the ice sending people flying, because height, weight, balance and momentum actually do something—hip-checking on the other hand is really terrible in NHL 12 it is one of the few flaws in the contact aspect of the physics engine, when you perform the hip-check no matter what size you are or what angle you come at the opposing player when you initiate it doesn't matter; i.e you can fly at someone bent over head first and they will go flying, also there does not have to be actual contact as it seems there is a 1ft box around you while hip-checking—When two bodies collide they can now stumble, both fall down, if the person trying to deliver the check is too small he will just bounce off the larger person. Goalie contact has now been implemented into the game you can now bump, or flatten the goalie if you are pissed off (been there done that) your team won’t like you much for the latter.
The next two topics in my review mainly apply to players who play online.
Glitch goals and loop glitches whatever else people call them. I personally call glitch goals exploits of areas where the AI can score the goals, as most of these “glitch goals” are found by copying what the computer does to score. They are still in the game but not nearly as rampant as the previous three games in the series, the worst being NHL 09 in my and many others opinions. A tremendous job has been done by EA to try and cut down on these much hated, skill less goals that people just won’t stop using or finding. Now the loop-glitch may still be in the game or it may have been fixed in a recent tuner. It has happened to me online in EASHL club matches about 5 times, one out of those 5 I assumed was intentional. It hasn’t happened since so lets hope for gamers sake it was patched, or there will be plenty of swearing coming out of Xbox Live headsets everywhere.
Disgruntled gamer—“You F#$%ing cheaters!!!!!”
Pros
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great gameplay
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updated physics
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exciting new game modes and features; Winter Classic, Be A Legend, goalie contact, net contact, losing helmets, glass breaking, new action tracker
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overall updated game
Cons
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a few in game issues
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horrible soundtrack, I am sick of hearing Billy Idol-Mony, mony at least you can deselect/mute songs
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some new features are just “re-added”
Overall I think this game is absolutely with out a shadow of a doubt a must have for any sports fan, or person who wants to have lots of enjoyment with friends online or off. If you want to get a new game and aren’t sure what to get I recommend picking up this title. My rating,
NHL 12 9.1/10 rating by TTR (Tech Twista Reviews)
