NHL 10 - Watching Sean Ramjagsingh play the game

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/15/2009 07:33:21

After the meeting with Stortini followed a long discussion of the game. It was an interactive Q and A between us and the producers and a lot was covered. We will discuss more on that later, but first we can now talk about our first impressions of the game.

Once this meeting was concluded, we were taken to a large game room to check out the current build of NHL 10! We assembled into the game room – a large area full of cubicles with Xbox 360s and large flat-screen HD TVs in every one of them.

We gathered around one main area, sat on leather couches to watch Mr. Ramjagsingh play the game as David Littman discussed what was happening on the screen. As we already knew what to watch for based on our earlier discussion, so the anticipation was high. I'll explain everything I saw... in order. A lot of these points you probably have already seen/read/learned from other articles, but maybe there's one or two things you haven't. Remember this is just everything we saw first and our impressions.. more talk about how game modes - depth, new features, will all be discussed at another time.

Crowds, a total and complete revamp. Finally there are women in the crowds. Minor detail? No way – it adds to the overall atmosphere and it was a long-time coming. Not only that, but the game was loaded at a certain point of the playoffs.. so we got to see waving towels, a sea of home jerseys, and the playoff-type interaction as to the happenings of the ice. Simply speaking, the crowds are simply incredible in NHL 10. Shiny new textures, animation, interaction, made an immediate impact. The crowd properly cheers when they are supposed to. They don’t when things aren’t going very well for their team. There are glass pounders (which you’ll hear as well). The crowds react in real time, during game play, and you’ll see it in the cutscenes as well. For example, during one cutscene, two players were pushing each other around. The crowd was cheering, standing – but when their player got knocked down, the crowd looked disgusted and sat back down. Crowd interaction is most effective and impressive during live action of the game.

Interactive crowds mean cool things. In a Dynasty, Be A Pro or other modes, it “remembers”.. and takes action. For example, if Pronger injures one of your players, your crowd will boo him every time he touches the puck. I've seen this on several wishlists but I never thought it would make it into the game anytime soon. I love it.

Continuing on, watching Mr. Ramjagsingh play - he says “watch this”. We were anticipating this and there it was on the screen – battle of the boards (which is one of David Littman’s favorite new gameplay features in NHL 10). There has been a lot of requests for board plays.. and it has finally arrived in the EA hockey game. If you are near an opponent and the puck is along the boards, you can initiate realistic board battles if you so choose. You can try to stick the puck out, try to body check for it, or try to kick it out with your skate. Battles can last 2 seconds or much, much longer. It looks very cool, it plays very cool, and I am missing it big-time now playing NHL 09 back at home. As we were all seeing this onscreen, we were all cheering.. it has been done very well.

Next - you all guessed it – why Zack Stortini was at the event. He helped out with the new fighting system. As Mr. Littmen himself admitted - NHL 09’s fighting was not their best effort, they really wanted to correct that. EA brought in Stortini (I believe back in November or December) to help out with the total fighting revamp. It was time for to show this to us, so it began… and what we saw was a fighting mode I have never seen in a hockey video game before… a first-person view. If you are playing vs against the computer as Mr. Ramjagsingh was, you’ll see your opponent’s animated face and arms/fists, and your own two fists. Using the left stick to aim and move your head side-to-side, you push buttons and use the right stick for the punching actions. The developers really wanted to put “you” into the fight. As you take blows, the edges of the screen blacken as you weaken. This continues until you can barely see anything – and if you get beaten too much, you’re knocked out you lose the battle. As you punch your opponent, his face animates into painful and angry expressions.

If you are playing against a human team, then you will see both of your faces, via a horizontal split screen. This could take a bit of time to get used to, but once you do it is good. Yes, fighting this year is more than one or two punches. Ramjagsingh's fight lasted a long time. We were asked to not sugar-coat anything and so I won’t. I’ve never been a big fan of first-person view in video games, so this new fighting system will take some time for me personally to get into it. But just the sheer length of the fight plus all you can do in it was definitely needed so we'll see if I can learn to love it.

Regarding fights – EA put even more into it regarding goons and superstars. We were shown this specifically so we could see it first-hand. If you challenge a superstar to a fight, you might instead be greeted by a goon who is protecting the superstar. In a replay, we saw the fight being initiated, but then from somewhere else, the goon butted in front of the intended person and started fighting instead. Admitedly, this sounded cheesy to me until I saw it. Very good EA.

Next, Mr. Littman instructed him to show us the new passing system. Passing is no longer be a matter of pushing a button and a perfect pass being executed. Not the case anymore… you can aim and pass your puck wherever you want. We were shown how effective this is as Ramjagsingh demonstrated a rebound pass off the boards. He aimed at a specific part of the boards and the pass was made. The puck hit the boards, rebounded and then needed to activate the intended player to catch the puck as it was a little off. Nice!

I witnessed cool things from this – such as the puck hitting the player’s skate, whereby an animation was initiated and the player kicked the puck to his stick. This also means no more passes going to the wrong player. Where you aim is where you’ll pass.. and if you aim a bit off, your pass will go wide. It’s ‘precision passing’, and it works extremely well. Of course, if this isn’t for you, a setting/slider of puck accuracy is available.. but it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting any assistance in passing after playing it this new way.

NHL 10 has intimidation tactics.. watching Ramjagsingh play we saw this develop. If you’re the type of player who likes to hit a lot, you can effectively intimidate players in the game. Your opponent can and will be affected – ice the puck, pass more/get rid of the puck quicker, mistakes start to happen, things like that. It will affect the game flow and changes momentum. You might be engaged in more fights, more penalties, it might cause the other team to retaliate.. crowds will boo/cheer.. game feels different, outcomes change.. it's something we only got a small taste of at this time. It looks great and is another welcome feature of this series.

Ok, now for another biggie. I was involved in a thread months ago at these forums, and from what it felt like it was a split 50/50 for people who liked this idea and those who didn’t. I believe that since it’s a part of the real NHL game, you should see it in the game and in NHL 10, you will see it and engage in it. I’m talking about post-whistle action. Again, with a “watch this” instruction, he engaged in some activities after the whistle was blown. He targeted a player and started shoving him around. It was evident that the game offers more time for post-whistle activity – and it can result in consequences. We saw him get a penalty for this activity. We were informed that several things can happen…- maybe you’ll start a fight.. maybe you’ll get a penalty.. maybe more than one penalty will be called, maybe you’ll get injured – it’s all there. That’s not all… we were asked “what happens in real life when a player shoots the puck at the goalie after the whistle blows?” What often happens of course is the opponents take issue and go after that player. It’s in NHL 10 as well.

Before we ended this session, they wanted to show us a couple more things. With the puck, he shot it down the ice, then paused the game.. and zoomed in on him. He explained that NHL 10 has animated facial animations throughout as you play. So, if you make a hard hit, you'll see the facial expressions for that. During this particular demonstration, the player tightened his face and had a concentrated look on it. And before I forget, the one-time shot off a loose puck.

This is just a small, small taste of some great new additions to the gameplay and graphics in NHL 10. With so much more to discover, things were looking really, really good. At this point we all were twitching in our seats in anticipation to actually playing this game ourselves. That discussion is reserved for another time.

Awesome write up Slap, I wish I was there

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/15/2009 08:14:13

Good list. When do we get to hear and see a screenshot of the entire goalie! In 1 image it looks like the player was getting bruised, or was that a shadow? Are players easier to injure?

It isn't anything people haven't already heard in other articles and such, but as we have a time table of when to say things, that's what it is. More of course will be discussed later when the time comes. However, based on what has been learned thusfar, we can talk about it more specifically and such.

slap can you say if they've gone away with the 3 fight max? For something like that having a cap on fights would be brutal

Possibly game misconducs!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/15/2009 08:38:06

Nice to see directional passing is being brought back into the series. That was one of the greatest things about NHL 2004 PC.

Hey Slap when you were in EAC, did you get to meet with any QA personnel? I'm just curious how over 200 refinements to NHL 10 is going to get properly tested in only 2-3 months of beta time...especially if it's the same QA group that tested the NHL 09 product.

I have all these answers, but with the NDA I am very careful with my replies. Today is rough for me - workwise -and will not be able to visit the forums all day today. Tomorrow is another story and I"ll be back with the answers I'm able to reply with at this time. In time you'll get all the answers, I assure you.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/15/2009 08:46:11

MAIN.aBiNeR wrote:Nice to see directional passing is being brought back into the series. That was one of the greatest things about NHL 2004 PC.

Hey Slap when you were in EAC, did you get to meet with any QA personnel? I'm just curious how over 200 refinements to NHL 10 is going to get properly tested in only 2-3 months of beta time...especially if it's the same QA group that tested the NHL 09 product.

Define properly there, ace. There's a difference between properly testing a game like WoW and X-craft, which release every 4-5 years or longer, and a game like NHL, which releases every 12 months, 11 if you think they take a small break after shipping a game and not counting the weeks after the game goes gold. By your standards, I highly doubt EA will be able to beta test to your satisfaction, but I think I speak for the rest of us when I say we would rather them introduce new aspects to the game, while correcting old issues (which they claim they have been doing) than simply repackaging a bug free 09 for NHL 10.

And I know, I know, you'd advocate a 2 year period in between games but that's never going to happen, so...

Hey slapshot, shouldn't Double O Domwin have a write up somewhere? I mean, I know it won't be much different than yours but I'm still curious to read it.

Even if it really is all the same stuff, I love reading it over and over.

All of these new features sound great, I'm just hoping they have fixed the AI to where they will know when to crash the net (no I'm not talking the strategy) for a pass in front or just get open in general.

By your standards

It's not a matter of standards. It's just the sheer volume of code changes they are making and only alloting 2-3 months of testing time on it. Common sense question really.

MAIN.aBiNeR wrote:

By your standards

It's not a matter of standards. It's just the sheer volume of code changes they are making and only alloting 2-3 months of testing time on it. Common sense question really.

Well, everything they add/change WILL be tested, it's just a matter of how much. How much testing will they do for a small improvement (included in the 200) when they need to spend most of their time testing the board mechanic or first person fights? Probably not enough to be safe, which is unfortunate, but it goes with the 11 month dev cycle so...

Probably not enough to be safe

Not probably...definitely not enough time. Thus, the reason for my post...questioning if there are to be any changes in their testing process...like perhaps a wider audience covering it?

Maybe it's best to let somene who signed an NDA answer this one.

Sounds like new features more lipstick and mascara. What about core gameplay like Defensive AI, goalie AI, shooting aim system wacked where players shoot the puck over the glass on a onetimer in front of the net, players freezing on the one-timer, magnet body checks etc.. etc.. was any of that improved with the game you played?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 05/15/2009 09:43:38

I got a few questions about gameplay:

Does fights start automatically this year? Or, do we have to press a button like this year.

Will we see multiple penalties being called for one team this year?

Will we see goalie interference?

Electronic Arts

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NHL™ 10