NHL 13 Keeps This Strong Franchise On Top PART 1

This September the crew over at EA Sports Vancouver are releasing the yearly installment of their NHL series (09/11/2013 to be exact). NHL 13 has a great product to build on from the NHL 12 that was released last year. Some key features that are added this year will be a online GM mode that is being dubbed GM Connected Mode, also they have built upon the physics engine from last year and used it to improve the goalies and the skating engines. I will be getting into these modes in more detail below and in part 2 of this preview. We will start with the True Skating Engine.

To start i have included a quick video from EA Sports that gives you a brief idea on how this will effect game play this year. Now let's go a bit more in depth on how this will effect and change the way you play the NHL series forever. The biggest problem in last years game was the fact that if you took a forward out of your defensive zone and flew down the side wall, the defensemen some how always kept up with you and in fact stayed right next to you. This year the physics engine does not allow for this to happen, now before i get ahead of myself i should explain that this years player attributes will greatly affect these races between players. For example if you are say Patrick Kane trying to go wide on a flat footed d-man, then said d-man will be watching Kane on his breakaway. For those of us that like to pound on the speed burst button all game long then we are going to have a hard time adjusting to the fact that the faster you are going, the wider of a turn that you are going to make. Stopping skating once in awhile to glide into your turn will help greatly in making that tight turn. The video posted shows this in better fashion. The most important part of all this is there will be explosive speed with the players that really do have that ability in real life and also will make players think about how you want to build you player in your EASHL team. This in turn will change the way we all approach playing this game whether it be in the offline modes or the various online modes.

One of the biggest requests that the fans of this series have been asking for was the ability to have a GM Mode online, well EA Sports has finally delivered this and in a big way. GM Connected mode will let you team up with players from across the globe and is going to be the largest multi-user online dynasty mode in any game ever. That is setting the bar high for all the other sports games out there. Inside the GM Connect mode there will be up to 30 user managed teams with up to 750 players within each league allowed. Now that is alot of players in one league at any given time and there are up to 5 different ways to play. First we have the regular option of playing vs the cpu, or head to head, the next choice is Co-Op online team play. The last 2 less used option are for you to coach your team by picking the play style and changing lines but not actually playing, the last is to simply set your A.I. and sim the games. Now that we know all of the ways that we can play, how is the league going to work ? Well i'm glad that you asked because the league owner is going to have the option to sim games so that we aren't left waiting for certain players to get their games out of the way thus keeping the flow of the league schedule going. Now for all of the Apple owners out there we are going to be able to keep tabs on our team with a GM Companion app that will be available on the Apple App Store. This may be the closest we are able to come to actually being the GM of an NHL team because there will not be any CPU teams to take advantage of in your trades and drafting. This will give more of a challenge to fans of this GM mode.

I would like to thank you for reading this part 1 of the NHL 13 preview. Look for part 2 in which i will be going over the presentation overhaul, the all new GM Brain, Be A Pro and EA Sports Hockey League improvements, EA Sports Hockey IQ, and finally the Demo details. Thank you for reading and see you again soon.