NHL 17

This is the most addictive game I have played- ever! I love the season mode and it has a large variety of other modes you can try your skill at. My only complaint is the play as a pro mode using a goalie as your character. Sometimes the goalie doesn’t quite respond as well as it should to commands. Maybe bumping down the skill level would help avoid the need for such fancy moves! 🙂

Got from Amazon USA, and ironically, even with the import duty and everything, it came cheaper than what Indian retailers were selling it for.
Love the game.

Bottom line: This game is worth it if you play online, even if you bought NHL16 (and 100% worth the upgrade if you last had 15).

I’ve been playing the NHL series since NHL 99. I usually buy every other year’s game, with some exceptions. I completely passed on NHL15 — that game was a horrible attempt at anything aside from good graphics. I did purchase NHL16 and it was certainly better but also lacking (especially in EASHL). Reading all of the changes that EA made for this game… I was impressed. I think they took some of our biggest complaints and really addressed them with this game. So far I’ve played about 8 hours of the game — mostly Online Vs, EASHL, and then just seeing what was new in some of the other modes.

Online Versus / Overall gameplay: 7/10
Biggest complaints: The defensive AI is pretty horrific at times. I can’t tell you how many times my other defender will be the first player up the ice on a breakout. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s way too often where as soon as you get the puck your other defender will just start skating up ice looking for the pass (further up the ice than your forwards). The player awareness of where the puck is, is really bad. I’m having a lot of instances of my players skating really close to the puck but their body is turned just so slightly so they won’t realize the puck is right underneath them as I run it over. Making minute changes with the skating is really difficult. While visually, the skating -looks- more realistic… it’s so difficult to actually control their (smaller/finite) movements. The skating lacks the fluidity that the older generations of game had.
Improvements: I think the goalies play a little better. Also, the computer on the Superstar difficulty is much more difficult than previous games. NHL is my favorite series so over time the Superstar difficulty hasn’t been able to put up a challenge but this year it’s much more difficult, which for me is a huge plus and makes some of the offline modes have more re-playability.

Draft Champions: 8/10
This is a really cool mode if you like the whole idea of the fantasy team but don’t have the time/money to be competitive in HUT. I loved this mode in Madden and was stoked they brought it in. The NHL series added some features and ignored some that were kind of important. Basically, you start out by picking one of four different types of teams (for example: Canadian players only, over 30 players only, USA players only, European players, Movember players, Stanley Cup winners, etc). You start out with a kind of crappy base team (most players are ranked 79 and below). Then, you have 12 rounds to pick high quality players to add to your team. Each round you have a choice of 4 players and they’ll each be about 87OVR and up. You’ll get the opportunity to play with Legends (Sakic, Lindros, Neely, Lidstrom, etc) – usually 2 show up during the course of the 12 rounds. It’s a fun mode. The issue with the mode is that the rewards only help you out if you play HUT. There’s no win/loss record, leaderboard, or anything that really helps you out in other areas of the game with this mode — so it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress towards anything. But it’s a fun mode for sure.

EASHL: 9/10
I miss the EASHL of NHL11 where you could really customize your attributes and it took a long time before you actually maxed things out. I thought that system was the best. But, this year’s is good too. Basically, when you make a player you don’t get to do anything to their height/weight or attributes. When you actually join the game you have an option of I think 10 different classes of player to be (Sniper, Hitting Sniper, Playmaker, Dangler, 2WF, Grinder, etc). Each class comes with a pre-set height/weight and attribute layout. There’s no bonuses you acquire over time for your attributes. You unlock a lot of different customization the more you play though. I think the mode is on the right track but considering a game made 6 years ago still competes in terms of that mode, it’s a little disappointing. But it’s a marked improvement over 16.

I don’t really play HUT. Be a Pro I heard didn’t get any significant changes to it. And I haven’t had a chance to look at the Franchise mode yet but I’ll update when I do. World Cup of Hockey mode is pretty cool and I like that they have all the right jerseys for it. I thought there would be more presentation in that mode but it’s almost like playing any other game.

Overall: The game is absolutely worth the $48 pricetag amazon offers its prime members. If you’re offline only or you really only play it for the gameplay and don’t care about any of the features that are in the modes — it’s probably not enough reason to upgrade over 16. Hope this helps!

Awesome game