Last year’s NHL 09 received tremendous critical acclaim and picked up many awards for sports game of the year. With NHL 09 EA Sports improved on everything they made popular in the 08 title. As good as last year’s game was it had a lot of issues, mainly with goal exploits and lack of features in their franchise modes. Though there were some issues, the game was still the best hockey game on the market. The combination of intuitive controls and the speed of the game drew even non-hockey fans into the game. This year EA Sports is hoping to once again improve on their winning formula. Over the next couple of days we will be giving you a preview of all the new improvements to NHL 10 leading up to our demo impressions. For the first installment we are going to preview the new Be a GM mode and talk about all the goalie improvements.

One of the biggest draws for any EA Sports title is the expansive franchise mode. This year there will be a new mode called Be a GM. Much like the Be a Pro mode you will become a General Manager and try to lead your team to glory. The goal in the mode, much like the other modes, is to win the Stanley Cup; however, as a GM your goal is also to ensure that you will be in contention in the future as well. In the GM mode you’ll have to scout prospects, manage your current players, sign free agents, make sure your staff is in order, and accomplish tasks to build up your reputation. You can get fired and your reputation will follow you so you want to make sure you are successful while keeping the owner happy to make sure you can get a job elsewhere in the future.

When you start off in the Be a GM mode you will have two directions you can go in, you can either choose your favorite team or go through the fantasy draft. For the first time in years you will be able to start a franchise by drafting current NHL players. The CPU draft logic has changed for NHL 10. In a regular Season mode the CPU will simply draft the best player on the board because it’s only one season. For the Be a GM mode the CPU will take into account five things: the players overall rating, his age, potential, what players they have already drafted and the player’s contract. So if you choose to go the route of the fantasy draft in your Be a GM mode you’ll see the CPU pick more realistically because they are also looking into the future of the franchise. Once you got your team together you can either choose to start at the beginning of the season or right before the NHL Entry Draft. The entry draft is a big deal to a GM especially if you want to have a long, successful career. New to NHL 10 is the prospects game. Here you will be able to evaluate the talent of the youngsters by either simulating the game or actually playing the game yourself. This will help you make a decision when draft day arrives. Once it is time to draft you’ll be brought into a brand new interface in which you can work with other GMs to make deals. If you want a certain player that you think won’t be available by the time your pick comes around you can use your nifty cell phone and start calling to try move up in the draft. On the flip side you can always trade down if you feel like you have all the pieces already and you want to take a chance on the players later in the draft. You will also get calls from other teams during the draft trying to get your spot in the draft.

Your ultimate goal will be to win a Stanley Cup but to become a legendary GM you’ll have to do much more than just win one Cup. To become a legendary GM you’ll have up to 140 tasks to complete. Some of these tasks are as easy as make a trade or sign a free agent but to become an elite GM you’ll have to complete tough tasks like win five Stanley Cups in eight seasons. All of these tasks will give you points that go towards unlocking six different levels on the road to legendary GM status. The points you gain will also go to upgrading your staff. Just like real life, your staff is very important to your team’s success. You’ll have four different staff types to manage during the season: Trainers, Amateur Scouts, Pro Scouts and Assistant Coaches. Trainers will help heal your players faster as well as help with durability during the long season. Amateur Scouts will help you get more information on the next draft class. Pro Scouts will get you information on trade rumors, who’s currently on the trading block and who the big free agents are. The Assistant Coach will be responsible for player development and will help you make decisions during a game. At the start, your staff members are level one and it’s up to you to use your GM points to upgrade the staff.

Being a GM isn’t all about winning games you’ll have to make a lot of tough trade and free agent decisions. These aspects of the game have been improved to provide a more realistic approach to acquiring players. You will have a “GM rep” that will affect new players coming to the team. Your rep will depend on how well you work with other GM’s, do you keep new players or trade them after one year and how many one year deals you make. The AI controlled teams will now be better at trading players, looking for trades that make sense. Each team will have a different goal and will act differently with trades and free agents. There will be teams that are rebuilding, playoff hopefuls, playoff bubble, playoff contenders and championship contenders. Where the team falls will determine if they want to keep a star player on their team or go after young prospects and free up some cash.

As good as the Be a GM mode sounds, the only thing that will keep you playing it is if the gameplay is just as good. This year EA Canada has spent a lot of time fine tuning the excellent gameplay from NHL 09. The first thing they looked to improve is the goalie AI. Too many times last year the goalie would be out of position or would go into the split too early. This year the goalie AI has greatly improved with their actions being more dynamic. The goalies will no longer react the same way to certain shots or where the puck is coming from. You’ll see more kick saves, saves from the butt, goalies reaching behind them to stop a puck sliding between their legs and the best of all they won’t go into a split unless they really need to. The goalie is also more aware of rebounds and instead of deflecting the shot back to the slot the goalie will now attempt to deflect the puck in the corner to avoid easy rebounds. Just for the goalie alone they have added 150 new animations giving the goalie more of a dynamic reaction instead of scripted animations. The improvements in the goalie animations and AI will help to take away exploit goals like the curb shot from last year’s game. The changes made are not to make the game more difficult but to make the game more realistic. You will have to be smarter about where you are putting the puck when shooting and you will have to pass the puck a bit to find a better shot opportunity.

The addition of Be a GM might actually give people a reason to play through a franchise mode. In my opinion the franchise modes for the previous NHL titles were lacking in features.  The goalie improvements should bring more realism to the game and help to limit the exploit goals. From the videos released by the producers of NHL 10, the goalies seem to act more realistic in their positioning and decision making. Be sure to check back with us later when we will tell you about the AI improvements and the new puck physics that will change the way you play the game.

[Source: NHL EA Sports]

Tags: EA, EA Sports, NHL 10

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 3:08 pm and is filed under PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.