NHL 12
For: Xbox 360, PS3
From: EA Sports
Price: $119.99
Rating: PG
Four stars (out of five)
So it has been with NHL 12, the latest ice hockey game and the lowest-profile of the three major titles EA Sports has released in the past few
Madden (American football) and Fifa (football) get all the hype and attention, but plenty of salty sports gamers have insisted over the years that NHL titles offer gameplay as good as anything.
I've always found ice hockey games to be fun to play but with limited appeal or longevity, because I don't know the teams and the players as well as I do in the other codes.
But there is no question it's a great sport - which is really starting to thrive in New Zealand - and it translates beautifully to a game.
Last year, the review copy of NHL 11 mysteriously bypassed the Signal offices. So NHL 12 feels like an exciting, fresh start for me.
Like all EA games, it looks utterly polished, from the menus through to the option screens and the actual game.
There are so many modes it almost feels overwhelming. Plain old "career mode" is now almost an afterthought for sports games, and NHL kicks in with Be A Pro, Be A General Manager, Be A Legend, Ultimate Team, the world championships (still no Ice Blacks, grrr) and more.
My favourite so far is Be a Legend, where you play as an NHL great and strive to tick off specific objectives, thus unlocking another legend to do the same thing.
You can also play in the Winter Classic, the league's annual outdoor game, for something different.
On the ice, the game seems to play slightly slower than in the past, possibly because the developers are aiming for an even more realistic experience.
EA continues to work on the physics engines in all its games and NHL's upgrades are quite obvious.
The puck can be manipulated in lots of new ways, and the skaters can lose their helmets, be charged into the bench and generally spill and thrill all over the ice.
The days of easy-normal-hard settings are long gone, and you are given hundreds of ways to tweak the options to make the experience just as you like it.
Both authentic and enjoyable, NHL 12 will be drooled over by ice hockey fans and appreciated by relative newcomers able to simply pick up and play.
