
	Platform Xbox 360 Genre Sports Publisher Electronic Arts Developer EA Canada ESRB E (Everyone) Released September 13, 2011

- Big fan of the new goalie interaction system - Be a Legend Mode is a whack-ton of fun!

- Start a player’s career in the juniors? Really? Who has the time for that? - Who chose this list of Legends? - Jets get referred to as Atlanta on a few occasions

Review: Dirt 3 (360) Review: Dead Island (360) Review: NHL 11 (360) Review: NHL Slapshot (Wii)
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NHL 12

Score: 8.5 / 10

With the return of fall comes the sharpening of hockey skates and the excitement in waiting for the puck to drop. NHL ’12 returns us to the sacred ice and we can play out the season in the way that we would best like. Over last year’s version, we have a few more cosmetic tweaks on the gameplay front, and a few new gameplay modes to pour into.

Stylistically, NHL ’12 shows no major upgrades over the previous version, just some

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loving tweaks to the game engine to better emulate the real thing. First and foremost is the obvious upgrades to the computer AI for both your teammates and the opposition – defenses will now move into passing lanes more readily and cut off the cross ice passes; repeating the same tactics will cause new tactics being played against you – if stripping the puck doesn’t work, they will hold you up. Gone are the immovable goalies of games

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past, skating full speed into them and they will react like any other player on the ice (with the additional penalties of course…) even up to dropping the gloves. The first goalie fight was a definite highlight for me!

Power forwards will notice that jockeying for position has changed too – previous versions you could set yourself up easily in front of the goalie. Now the defense will push and rough you up in front of the crease and you’ll really have to battle tooth and nail for that prime real-estate. Some of the changes from last years’ version have been tweaked in their own right. The broken stick feature is less obtrusive now, some games it seemed as though I would break 2 sticks a shift now it happens less often and usually only after you stress your stick appropriately (it took some stick checking while being dragged to snap my twig on offense and blocking a slap shot at point blank range on defense this time). Hitting seems a little more realistic now as well – lighter players always seemed completely unable to knock anyone down at all and that definitely does not happen. Lining up your hits properly instead of just aiming for incidental contact will now get the desired result regardless of the sizes of the players involved.

The new additions to the gameplay modes are the “Be A Legend Mode” and the expansion of the “Be A Pro Mode” to include the Junior progression into the NHL. Entering the modern NHL as a young superstar appealed to the dark evil part of my psyche that enjoys stacking my favorite teams will all sorts of firepower to annihilate all opposition. For some reason though the list of Legends had some good choices and some straight up head-scratchers and limited you to J.Roenick until you progressed through the mode significantly. My personal list of 9 Legends would have diverged rather quickly from their choices and would have shown a little more diversity than what we saw (not a single player from earlier than 1960). To further extend the game-life of the “Be A Pro Mode” you can now start off your career in the CHL – it was mildly amusing to create my character for my hometown Kamloops Blazers, then the reality of how much gameplay I was going to be subjected to in order to complete this mode, my interest waned.

The only nitpicky thing that I could find was when I played with the newly formed Jets, I had a few mentions of them as Atlanta… kind of a strange oddity but considering the short turn-around for these changes, I’d call it forgivable to even have that up and running in time for release. All in all, I found NHL ’12 enjoyable and had a grand ole’ time picking it up again.

- Tazman

(October 20, 2011)