NHL 11

« For the third year in a row, EA Canada has crafted a hockey experience that is seemingly flawless. »

« If EA just introduced the new Ultimate Hockey team and washed their hands of the rest, I would say cash cow...but thankfully the team never lets me down as the introduction of this mode, along with enhanced AI, better game play, and the new physics engine that is so random I find myself catching my breath between puck drops make this an experience I've never felt before. »

« EA Sports' NHL 11 is not only the best hockey game ever made, it is quite simply the best and most accurate sports game ever made. »

« NHL 11 is not only the ultimate hockey game, it's the ultimate sports game. EA Sports gives us the authentic feel of the NHL in a game where you are the star. It's no doubt in my mind that this is the sports game of the year 2010. »

« In the end, this is a game that's hard not to recommend, especially in light of the fact that 2K Sports didn't offer a competitor on the 360 or PS3 this year, so EA could have just stuck with last years game. Instead, they upped their offering to the point that taking this year off could be absolutely the worst thing that 2K could have done. »

« EA's NHL 11 Hockey celebrates it's 20th year as a franchise by giving us a near perfect sports game. Its only downsides are minor framerate issues and the lack of a "team builder" module. »

« EA Canada's NHL 11 marks the 20th Anniversary of the storied NHL Franchise, and I can say without a doubt that a new high watermark has been set (NHL 94 purists be damned). This is the closest a game has ever come to recreating the feeling of playing real life hockey. »

« Yet again, the peerless NHL team has produced a modern classic that will surely sit at the pinnacle of the year's sports releases. This is probably the best hockey game ever -- until NHL 12 comes out, that is. »

« Decent hockey game. I do enjoy the promise of this era of EA hockey titles. It was before I found out they were good with just dragging their feet on putting out good products. »

« I'm very surprised by how many positive reviews I've read on this site already. It's not that I haven't seen any negative user reviews, but didn't see any from the actual critics who usually go much further with their critiquing. This game just feels sluggish and slow compared to last years game. It's not that there aren't any improvements at all to the gameplay. Hip checks are a nice, realistic addition to the game that had been missing for many years, but even better than that I noticed was the improved puck physics. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but it was practically impossible to lift the puck any higher than the goalie glove even while he was in the butterfly in last year's NHL 10. That can significantly diminish your chances of scoring on certain breakaways, penalty shots and shootout attempts depending on where the goalie slides and/or which side you commit to first. Anyway, these improvements just aren't enough to outweigh or counter how much different the speed of NHL 11 is compared to last year's 10. Also, the addition of the pressure sensitive passing is also somewhat realistic and gives you control over how hard/fast you can pass the puck to a teammate, but it just doesn't feel right with how the skating flows. Your players move slow enough that it's just all too easy to get drilled before you can get the pass off, and this is extremely frustrating when you have an obvious player to pass to for a huge scoring chance but is denied and is all for not despite his perfect positioning for the nearly developed play. I also like to note that there is finally a an advanced faceoff feature that involves bodily position as well as timing a quick pass off the bat with the right thumbstick which we've already been accustomed to in previous titles. Despite these key four additions to the series, It's arguably just as much of a step backward than it is forward, and for someone like me who doesn't buy the games year after year, this is one of the reasons why. »

« The physics and gameplay I'd put in the B to B+ range, same with the in game commentary and music. However, that all gets dragged down by an economy size F grade regarding an extremely glaring bug, along with EA's refusal to fix it: How can you have two decades of licensing to make video games for the NHL, and be completely incapable of getting the points right for the standings in Be a Pro mode? How can your playtesters miss the fact that the game fails to record the single point earned for an overtime loss? And how can your company then refuse to fix that bug despite making two patches that fix other aspects of the game? One point for an OTL, EA. --- It's in the game. »

« NHL 11 is EA's greatest son. The graphics are flawless and as I say every year 'How can the graphics get better?' but they can. Gameplay is brilliant and gets more realistic every year. with the new game engine. Alongside FIFA and Madden you would think this would be hard to compete, but to say this is the best hockey game ever is an understatement. This is the best sports game ever is more like it!! Excellent 10/10. »

« Hockey represented as well as I would want it to be. It feels real, looks real, sounds real, plays real. I love hockey video games more than the sport itself. Would be a 10, but I reserve that score only for a ground breaking revolutionary game. The improvements from the last EA NHL are minor, but, you have to move with the herd if you want to challenge the online community. There is a "10" worth of fun to be had here though. The multiplayer servers seem be randomly out of comission for online team play sometimes (probably the true minor irritation that keeps me from scoring it a 10). More long term appeal than possibly anything else out there. Bottom **** you like video game hockey (who doesn't!), this is the crown jewel to date. »

« EA has gone and done it again. Every year I say to myself "You are not buying another NHL game" and I now own NHL 2003 straight through to 2011. I played it at a friends house before buying, and the addition of the faceoff engine, more realistic body checking, better shooting engine, goal reviews, broken sticks (and the list continues) left me needing to buy this game. Now in my third season, I still love picking it up and playing a few games before goin' to bed. »

« Honestly NHL 11 didn't bring anything new to the table besides ultimate team. Graphix are the same as 09 and 10. How ever don't get me wrong i probably play it every day but the only reason i bought it is because every one abandoned EASHL in nhl 10 because they wanted nhl 11. So the game didn't blow my mind or anything but it is fun. Overall: worth getting »

« Since the release of NHL09 the EASPORTS hockey franchise has seen very little in game-play updates and lingering bugs from the previous titles are still present. The new feature for this year is Ultimate Team mode and is basically the only new game mode addition to the game. Similar to FIFA and Madden in years past you use playing cards to build an NHL team, salary cap compliant of course, and then take this team online/offline to complete in games/tournaments. You even need training cards and coaching cards to keep your team competitive. You must sign players with contract cards. You earn EA pucks by playing games and can spend them on all these necessities. This all sounds good in theory however there are a few issues. For one you must be connected to EA servers to play even offline against the CPU. This is a problem considering the state of affairs the EA servers are currently in. It's virtually impossible to play for a few hours and NOT got disconnected. The EASPORTS official forums are littered with similar complaints. Here's the issue: When you get disconnected, you receive a loss. Many people report 1/4 games they will lose connection. This very much so ruins the competitive nature of the game. Second to consider is that when you usually lose, you get 300 EA pucks or so instead of the usual 500 pucks for winning. When you lose connection... you get 0 pucks. Consider that every player has a contract length and you can see why this becomes a problem, especially for the people who have this happen in 1 of 4 games. The second issue with HUT (and this applies to all forms of versus mode too) is that the team who deserves to win does not often enough. There are 3-4 "go-to" plays in the game that if you setup, all game, you will likely win. However if you attempt to play normally, like real hockey, trying all sorts of plays to simulate the sport... you will find yourself many times with twice as many shots and twice as much time on attack as your opponent, yet losing 2-1. In hockey this can happen, however in NHL11 this happens far too often. It takes away from the competitive nature of the game knowing that no matter what you do, if you don't setup the same 3-4 plays you know work almost every time, you might as well just toss up a coin for who's the winner. Moving past HUT let's take a look how the AI. Once again little to no improvement. The good is that they challenge you a lot more defensively. The bad is that they still setup almost nothing offensively, only to match your goals with the 2-3 times they actually do something right. I've tried making the game the most difficult it can be. They are still not competitive. You'll be in their zone all game, 28 shots, 3 goals for... 5 minutes left in the game, they'll get 9 shots on your net, double their time on attack in a matter of minutes and match those 3 goals. That is the game's idea of increased difficulty; having the AI cheat with puck control and score goals at will, after not being competitive all game, just to keep the score clean. If you are new to the franchise you might be able to enjoy the offline play on lower difficulties, however if you are an experienced hockey gamer you will find yourself dominating the AI on all difficulties only to have them randomly tie up games with 2 minutes, over and over again, out of no where. Let's move on to the final part of this review: The game-play This is what the game is renown for, the main reason it's won dozens of sports game of the year awards. I am sad to say it's not really fixed from last year. Improved however, to some degree. There is a new physics engine for hits that truly makes playing online fun again. The hitting engine is not realistic but it is entertaining at that. Also, no more bouncing off people, not often anyways. They've also fixed the stick lift so it's more realistic. They've added in a manual one-timer which is useless but neat. Finally the new passing system involves you having to charge your passes and aim them properly now. Good in theory but could use some tweaks. Overall the gameplay is improved and rather entertaining. The game truly shines playing casual games offline with your friends. However taking this online, into the online team play mode that the game is renown for, is more hit and miss. Over the course of your first 150 games you will unlock various player cards, boosts and equipment that will increase the attributes of your online character. However once a user has reached their max unlocks, they can build their player up in a manner that gives them an advantage over most other users. Stats such as puck control, agility, balance and hand-eye can be put to 99, making it overly difficult to pull simple, properly timed defensive maneuvers against them. This can combated with other stats, yes, but that requires you to also have your player maxed out with unlocks. Much like MW2 was, OTP and EASHL is only truly enjoyable as a veteran of the game... »