I don't get it. You play Madden or FIFA and all EA Sports has done is aggressively make them more high scoring and "arcadey." Especially in the past couple years. Yet with NHL they have done their damndest to make it slow, bland, and boring each year since 13 or 14.
The gameplay is not fun. Too many things seem out of your control. Random bumping with the puck changing possession back and forth, terrible pass pickups, random passes to no where, worse cycling, more difficult to play defense and stop inevitable cheese goals because you can barely use the poke check, etc. And I'm sooooooooo sick of scrubs saying YoU DOnT KNoW HOW tO PoKE ChEck on here. Highly ranked versus player for years, highly ranked dman 3v3 for years. High % goals are inevitable in every game as players figure it out. The only way to combat them is by allowing some resemblance of the old poke check. Otherwise you are stuck with this bumping bullshit that seems like a coin flip on who gets the puck a lot of the time.
When I was in college, NHL and FIFA were the games to play against your buddies. But now it seems to be mostly FIFA and that's it. People can cry about the early 2010s era of NHL as being unrealistic, but those games were a hit amongst friends and actually fun. And you felt like you were in control. Less errant passes. Easier cycling (those go hand in hand). Consistent hitting. If you knew where a player was going, you could stop them. All this shit feels less in your control now.
But yea....I'll be buying it because there isn't an alternative.
