The past two days for me have been a study in what it must be like to be a Hermit Crab. SynonymForWet on Live if you wanna catch the mittens in some NHL If you recall, a couple months back, I sent out an NHL 19. EA, somehow, did not listen. The Good Even if the name makes me cringe worse than watching Marc-Andre Fleury give up a to Casey Cizikas in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, World of CHEL uggggghhhhhhhh is damn near perfect. Four game modes, all incredibly fun. NHL Pro-Am, NHL Ones, NHL Threes and EASHL. Outscore your opponent by any means necessary. More wins get you more XP and cooler outfits to wear and emotes to trash talk your opponents throughout, which as a petty Millennial, I absolutely love. We all remember the NHL 09 add on NHL Arcade. If not — check out some. However, all NHL Threes offers by way of power ups is just making a puck worth more goals for your team or subtracting goals from your opponent. I want guys growing to 10 feet tall, goalies shrinking and slap shots becoming missiles. In years past, if you played center in EASHL and chose to be a playmaker, you were locked in to whatever skill traits EA decided came with that type of player. Now, you can add on to what EA has deemed the traits of a playmaker with custom trait loadouts. This is big, because you can decide with your teammates what your strengths are and play to them, giving your team a decided advantage. Are you a playmaker, but want to improve your shot? Offensive defenseman, but you want to occasionally lay the hammer? Overall, World of CHEL kill me is the best innovation EA Sports has put into the NHL franchise in years. It has something for the casual gamer to the dedicated NHL gamer. Along with a brand new game mode, the physics of the game got a complete overhaul, which thank you based Crosby. When playing as NHL teams outside of World of CHEL stop, please , player type, size, weight and speed all matter much more now. That said — if Hagelin takes the wrong route…Chara is going to send him into next week. The biggest difference is in skating. For the past couple of games, tight turns and stopping were rare. You essentially had to be one of Crosby, McDavid or Ovechkin to have that skating ability. The Bad When rolling out a brand new game mode such as World of CHEL god damn it again? Game modes like Be A Pro and Hockey Ultimate Team have remained largely the same over the past couple of years. The biggest failing of this is Be A Pro. It was a good start for a more narrative-driven style of gameplay. It laid a good foundation to build on. They scrapped it the next year. A lot of sports games like Madden and NBA2K have shifted their Be A Pro modes to more than just the game, but living the life of a professional athlete. Sports games are going a certain direction with Be A Pro, and NHL is very behind. The What in the Name of Holy Christ Were They Thinking with That? During my brief foray into Online Versus, I met an opponent who chose to counter my choice of the Penguins with the Montreal Canadiens, bold move. My foe managed to take 20 TWENTY!!!! Of those 20, 19!!!!!!! It needed fixed — not like this. EA has done phenomenal work striking the balance between video game fun and arcade nonsense with the NHL franchise. They went far too real with this one. Even so much as using your stick for good defensive positioning will lead to tripping calls if it gets in the way of a player. Overall, NHL 19 may be the best version of this franchise to be released since they basically did a complete overhaul in 2009-2010 for NHL 10.
