NHL 21 - Review
Ever since I've been a young teenager, thanks to the ABC for showing a highlight NHL game every week, I have been a fan of Ice Hockey and with that came a love for the Pittsburgh Penguins (who couldn’t love the mighty number 66 Super Mario Lemieux) and of course also as an avid video game player a love for the NHL series of video games. From the first EA sports NHL game, the unimaginatively titled “NHL Hockey” through to my absolute favorite game in the franchise NHL 98 on the PS1, with its FMV intro, 3D graphics and full game commentary being a revolution at the time, the NHL series has been a constant staple in my video gaming routine.
Over the last decade or so I can’t help but feel the series had started to lose its way a little with the focus of the game shifting to cash cow modes like Hockey Ultimate Team and online modes like CHEL it was hard not to feel slapped in the face by EA due to the lack of improvements to the franchise mode that the popularity of the series had been based on all these years, in fact I had grown so sick of each game being a carbon copy this led me to skipping last year’s game all together. Will NHL 21 slap the puck into the net? Or will it be sent straight to the sin bin?
The main focus of this year’s mode definitely starts with the Be A Pro mode, franchise mode is my favourite mode of the series but recent years have seen me starting to take more interest in the Be A Pro mode, even though not many upgrades have come in the last few years to this mode it was still a great way to create a virtual representation of yourself and see how you can perform when put into a real NHL team out on the ice. This year BAP has seen all its Christmases come at once as the mode has been given a major overhaul, in the past the mode has been criticised as being ‘soulless’ and that you basically create a player and then just go through the motions out on the ice and that there is no real story of your rise to glory through the mode, well all of that changes this year. After creating a player in NHL 21 you can pick one of three ways to start your career, you can choose to work your way to the NHL draft by playing through either the Canadian or European hockey leagues or you can just choose to go straight into the NHL, I would advise against this though as by playing through either the Canadian or European leagues you can earn a bunch of points you can use to upgrade your player.
The biggest new addition to the mode is that it now has a story mode (of sorts) and in between games you will now have conversations with your agent, your coach or even fellow teammates and the press, the choices you make in these conversations will affect different attributes such as how much your teammates, coaches, brands and the press like your player. A radio station like broadcast will also occasionally play between games and discuss your progress and sometimes even have fans call in to talk about you, this is a great touch. Even when you are playing in a game your coach will constantly call you over to the bench and issue challenges to you such as scoring a goal or upping the pressure on your opponents which will also affect your players standing within the organisation and with your fellow teammates. The better you play the quicker you move up your teams lines and the more ice time you earn, which of course quickens your goal of becoming an NHL superstar as by performing better you earn more points to spend on various abilities to upgrade your player.
Also new to BAP this year is the ability to spend money you earn through your contract on various items from a mundane scooter all the way through to a glorious luxury mansion, these items have little effect on the actual game, you can’t actually go inside your newly purchased mansion and explore it for example, but purchases will add to the various stats of your player and help you play better on the ice, it’s a good idea, but a little hollow in practice. It may sound like I am gushing a little about the changes to BAP, and I am, but with all good things always come bad things, while the new touches to BAP are great and I feel like it’s a fantastic base that I hope EA Sports decide to expand on through the next few years, there are a few problems. For one if you do play through the European or Canadian leagues and end up with a high draft ranking it seems you are always drafted by either the New York Rangers or the LA Kings, which becomes a bit predictable and boring, perhaps the draft order could be randomised for each new BAP player you make thus making the NHL draft a bit less unpredictable and more exciting as you won't already know where your player is going to end up before the draft. The mode and its new changes feel genuinely refreshing for the first year or so that you are in the NHL after that the conversations that it all becomes a bit repetitive and grating however, I must give EA Sports props for trying something new here and it is a great foundation that I hope they build on in future iterations of the game, whatever you do though EA, please don’t turn BAP into a horrible story mode like what you have done with Madden, I seriously couldn’t take it, I might even cry.
Franchise mode is another staple mode that has seen very few changes over the past few years and is in bad need of a complete overhaul, unfortunately for avid franchise players even though there are a few changes this year they aren’t enough to lift the mode to the kind of depth or standard that is featured in other sports games like NBA 2K or MLB The Show. The updates this year focus on scouting and trading and the trade deadline, when the day of the trade deadline hits there will be a buzz of frenzied activity that sees you offering trades to other teams, receiving counter proposals and really trying to work out how to get the best bang for your buck as your team hopefully makes a push towards the playoffs. This is a great addition and to me it really captures the frenzy of what happens in the real NHL.
On the multi-player side of things not much has changed from previous editions of the game, as always you have the more arcade like CHEL mode and Hockey Ultimate Team mode to quench your thirst if you are inclined to play online, I am not really into these modes at all as I always get decimated by anybody I meet online, maybe I should just git gud. There is a new addition to the online modes this year called HUT Rush. This mode not only has the objective of beating your opponent but you are also rewarded for how you beat your opponent, pulling off stylish dekes and combining these together will see your score multiplier rise and if you do manage to score a goal you will be rewarded with point based on how stylistic it is. You can play 5v5, 3v3 and in various other fun ways that feature ‘money pucks’ that are worth more when you score with them, you can even play as NHL teams mascots if you are feel like living out your fantasy of being a furry on ice skates. Multi-player really does have an abundance of ways to play depending on what mood you are in, and if you are mainly an online player then EA Sports have you covered.
The presentation has improved greatly over the past few years and I think this year it has stepped up even further. Getting rid of Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk out of the commentary booth has been one of the smartest moves EA has made with the game over the past few years, they were seriously terrible, James Cybulski and Ray Ferraro took over commentary duties last year and while far from perfect they were miles ahead of the previous duo and sound even better this year due to the added time spent recording lines together, I would kill for EA Sports to bring back Gary Thorne as part of the commentary team though, he is one of the best in the business. Graphically presentation has also improved, gone are the boring predictable between play shots from the same angles, in between plays you will now see the camera swoop around the stadium and film the action from many new angles, you will also see stat overlays showing team leaders and who is in the race to win the various yearly trophies in the NHL, this is something I have been crying out for the past few years and it is finally starting to happen!
While NHL21 is far from perfect EA Sports have actually put in some effort to improve some of the game modes this year which is in stark contrast to what they have done with Madden and FIFA. Some of the improvements may be basic but the strides made in the Be A Player mode will hopefully lead to bigger and better things in future years. The game actually feels more like hockey than it has in a long time and the new dekes added to the game give you a lot of options on how you go about attacking the net, even though some of them require the dexterity of a Russian gymnast to actually pull off. For once an EA Sports game feels less like a copy and paste of the previous year’s edition and this makes me excited for the future of the franchise.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Electronic Arts
The Pros
+Be A Pro Overhaul shows promise
+HUT Rush is a great new addition for the multi-player crew
+Presentation is slowly improving year by year
+Improved AI and deke controls make this feel more like real hockey
The Cons
-Franchise mode still needs a lot of improvement
-Game lacks polish, there are a lot of basic errors like spelling mistakes
-The newest NHL Team the Seattle Kraken are not included
-Goalie AI still needs work as once you find the cheese you can score on them effortlessly
