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THE OFFICIAL NHL 13 THREAD

Nail

By Nail
in Off-Topic General

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mpt Canucks First-Line

mpt

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I honestly don't give a !#!#$ who's on the cover, the case sits in the drawer anyway. Why do people make a big deal about who's on the cover? EA should spend more time improving the glitches and gameplay and less time wondering who they'll pick for a picture.

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Tanev's Smirk Canucks Rookie

Tanev's Smirk

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It's truly the little things that count. I wish the NHL makers would take things from the other sports games.

Like I was watching my brother play FIFA today. While the game loads it allows you to practice in the arena against a goaltender. FIFA has had this for years! Why can't NHL?

It even shows current scores of other games happening in GM mode while you're playing one of your own.

I don't understand how these things can slip by when the games are made by the same company.

Even the celebrations in FIFA are cooler than NHL. If you run over to another player after you score, it will hug them and other teammates will join. In NHL you get the same crappy ones and nobody hugs each other unless you score in OT or something and get that same cutscene that's been used for years.

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Dream Theater Junior Prospect

Dream Theater

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Am I the only guy that thinks the new skating looks like absolute garbage? The speed boost animation is a direct flashback back to NHL 2001. I am seriously worried about the way that it looks. I can already see every single person in the game mashing the speed boost button resulting in the game being played at 120 km/h.

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DollarAndADream Canucks Star

DollarAndADream

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Am I the only guy that thinks the new skating looks like absolute garbage? The speed boost animation is a direct flashback back to NHL 2001. I am seriously worried about the way that it looks. I can already see every single person in the game mashing the speed boost button resulting in the game being played at 120 km/h.

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DollarAndADream Canucks Star

DollarAndADream

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I thought the animation from the videos that have been released looked really dumb too, but I didn't think it did while playing the game. Not sure if they made any changes or if I wasn't really paying attention to it, but to me it looked fine. That's all I'll say or I'll get in trouble. :P

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-Vintage Canuck- Canucks Hall-of-Famer

-Vintage Canuck-

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NHL 13 Interview with Associate Producer Ben Ross:

NHL 13 from EA Sports and is the 22nd installment of the franchise, which will feature Flyers sniper Claude Giroux on the cover. This year’s edition promises to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, leaps for the franchise thanks to a long list of big new game play, mechanic and graphical updates. We sat down with one of NHL 13′s associate producers, Ben Ross, at E3 and discussed the game after having a hands-on preview on the show floor. This interview is exclusive to Gaming Illustrated.

GI: Sean Gibson at the E3 booth with Ben Ross from NHL 13. I just went through the demo, saw the video and got some hands-on game time. It looks like there is a quantum leap here between NHL12 and NHL13. As a big fan of the franchise, I mean on paper as we haven’t seen the release yet; it looks like the biggest jump since like NHL07.

Ben Ross: Yeah, it definitely is the biggest leap since ’07 when we introduced the Skill Stick. And year-on-year, from 12 to 13, we’re going to see a dramatic improvement, so if you played 12 it’s going to be a huge leap, but if you haven’t played the game since ’07 or you haven’t played it on this generation, this is the year to get the game. We have all new True Performance Skating, which is an all new skating engine and EA Sports Hockey IQ where it’s basically the artificial intelligence and the strategies in the game have been taken up a huge notch.

GI: Let me give you my rapid reaction after playing one period of your game. It’s a small sample size, but as a hockey player, I love the changes. It felt more realistic. You can’t just cut in on a dime. If you’re skating at full speed, you’re going to have to account for that when you’re coming down on a break-way or even on defense. How do you think this game, from a physics perspective, is aimed at for real hockey players as opposed to maybe a gamer who’d never been on the ice?

Ben Ross: Well, as you know, our game was the first team sports game to have real time physics, which came in for the hitting, so, it was only the next step to actually bring that in for skating now that we have the technology to pull it off. It’s going to change the game completely. The nice thing is, it doesn’t come up to a gamer that knows how to manipulate the controller anymore, physics now makes sense. You know now if you’re going too fast, you’re not going to be able to cut in, so I think that hockey fans will really appreciate it because it adds the realism, but even a casual gamer that comes in that maybe doesn’t know too much about hockey, it’s going to make sense right off the bat for them as well.

GI: My first impression is, “Wow, what a big change for the offense,” but then playing through it, I felt it was a bigger adjustment mentally on defense.

Ben Ross: Yeah, definitely. I think that people were worried when we had the top end speed and explosiveness, coming into the game that it was going to be a breakaway fest. When they get their hands on it they see that there’s a huge balance one way or the other, it makes it much more predictable. When you see a guy coming in with high speed you don’t really want to jump forward and go for that big hit anymore until you see him commit to a direction. You see a guy go into glide, you might stay back and retain that gap which is more realistic to hockey, but as soon as he commits with speed you can now drive him out, and when he gets to that lane you can take him right over to the post and it creates a lot more dynamic hits and things like that as well.

GI: Yeah, again I think people were concerned that, “Well, this is just going to be a breakaway – deke – score.” But it felt like, “Okay, you’ve got to be very judicious with the top end speed on offense.” On defense, it was more of about positioning.

Ben Ross: Yeah, it’s way more of a positional game, way more authentic to the sport, but at the same time it sort of creates like a cat-and-mouse game. You’ll still see the high-flying speed of the game, being able to take the speed up a notch. We’re sort of at an 80 or 90 percent last year of where we were with the game this year (as top speeds have increased this year). You’ll still see those high-flying speeds, the guys that have tons of speed like Gaborik, you’ll see them flying down the wing, but at the same time they can get minimized by a great defensive play and that’s where the EA SPORTS Hockey IQ stuff comes in, because we have the strategies as well. If you’re getting beat a lot with speed, you can draw back into a trap, similar to what Tampa Bay did with the 1-3-1, or you can use your speed as well on defense and have a high-flying forecheck and really put that pressure on the other team and dump the puck in and have three guys flying in as well.

GI: How dynamic is this AI in this year’s edition? Is it going to be–if I have a set play or I have a method that really is working for me in the first and second period, is that defense going to adjust in the third period, and is that going to carry game-to-game?

Ben Ross: If you’re playing against the AI you’re going to see a huge leap. We actually spent more time this year than the last three years combined on AI, so you’ll have a lot of help from your teammates I find myself when I play, I’m sticking as the one player as opposed to switching all the time because I can really trust them. You’ll also see them adjust throughout the game, so they may start out in the 1-3-1, but if they find that they’re not able to clog the zone like they want to and you’re getting are real dump and chase game going, they’ll switch it up. You’ll get a lot of different looks, which will keep the strategy changing. Like I say, it’s sort of that cat-and-mouse game, the pros and cons, and you’ll find that it really puts you to the test regardless.

GI: We talked about two of the big features. What are some of the smaller features that maybe haven’t made it to the top of the press release charts with the releases that we’ve gotten in the news that you’re very excited about? What are some of the small little details that you’re excited about?

Ben Ross: Well, not even necessarily small details, we have another side with our connected experience. We’ve added GM Connected this year and we’ve added NHL Moments Live which is going to connect you to the real world NHL, those are two really big things to look sort of forward to in the next couple of months as we head to release. We’re showing the game plays off today, but those are two big features as well.

GI: I know in the past you’ve worked with coaches like Marc Crawford to really get an insider’s perspective into the NHL. Are you still working with folks in the NHL?

Ben Ross: We have a partnership with the NHL, it’s just building and building, so that’s where we’re getting a lot of the media and stuff. You’ll see some ties into the game this year, and just strategies along like having a local hockey team. We have great access to their arena. We were able to upgrade our graphics this year because of the connection there, but on the coaching side, that’s really where all the strategies came from. We have five times the strategies that we had in the game from last year, and that’s because of having those connections.

GI: I’d like to rub salt in the wounds right now (lol), right into the wound of your Vancouver team as our local Kings destroyed your team; on an NHL side, what do the Canucks have to do to get back to the finals? Oh and did I mention I’m a huge Kings fan?

Ben Ross: The Canucks have a great team on paper, we’ve seen them put it together all the way sort of, within an inch kind of, to game seven last year. It was disappointing to see them lose to the Kings this year, obviously, but at the same time seeing how LA has embraced the Kings, and being down here for E3, having hockey abuzz, I got over it pretty quickly and it’s just sort of happy the way that it’s worked out for our game.

GI: I can tell you as a lifelong Southern California person who loves hockey, as a stranger in a strange land, it is thrilling to see hockey take off again in this town and that people are buzzing about it and that people I never knew even followed hockey are talking about it. We haven’t seen this kind of buzz in L.A. at least. I mean, in Anaheim we had the Cup, which was amazing. The NHL has always taken the position as, “We’re happy where we are. We have our fans.” But I always thought the gamers could be a way for the NHL to find a new market of fans to bring into the game.

Ben Ross: The game is actually a perfect model for that. People get in, and they see the high-flying speed. Video games is really that level of entry. People get in and just have fun playing against their friends in their own living room, and I think that they do sort of get that infinity with their team, because they start playing with those players, they know who they are. NHL uses lots of media outlets, and our game is just another opportunity for them to do that.

GI: Awesome, well, I can tell you’re very excited. You’ve got a great demo going here. Congratulations on what looks like it’s going to be a great release for NHL 13.

Ben Ross: Great, thanks a lot.

GI: All right, thank you.

http://gamingillustr...l-13-interview/

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