EdGeinFurniture

Overall I love the game, haven't been this excited over any game in while. Poke check is great and as a guy who mainly plays d in eashl and HUT while playing with my friends this is such a welcomed addition. To casual players in may be harder to learn to actually aim your pokes and choose the right timing but not only does it improve the overal experience in the game it also makes it more competable, where you'll have to learn to defend instead of spamming the poke check. Physical play is great. Also I like that you don't get really good shots when your player is in a akward position and it has an effects on the quality of the shot. I like that d-men need to give good opening passes or first passes and it's a little harder to do than in previous nhl games. Itercepting passes works pretty good and using that poke to correctly aim at the passing lanes, it makes a big difference. In Chel the traits a nice addition, I like that you can have a little customization to the build of your player, the weight and height and have a small boost in certain areas as well. It's all good. I actually went berserk and bought the most expensive edition of nhl which I haven't done ever and really looking forward playing the HUT mode and also be able to see how well does the skill zone playing work for those who use it. Hopefully the new system will force those players to actually play for themselves instead of always relying on their cpu to do the job. Just to sum this up, last NHL was too arcade style for me to enjoy the game, I love when there are multiple ways of scoring and playing instead of trying to always exceed in a certain way or doing the same goal over and over and over again. I love watching hockey and this is the most realistic hockey game thus far. I hope you guys do not listen too much for the crying about the poke check, I haven't noticed getting undeserved penalties and I've played the BETA a lot! Lack of self criticism is all I can say to the ones who are "getting too much penalties" or saying that "I extend my stick and the opponents dangles himself to the stick to cause penalties", if you've ever watched hockey it doesn't take much for a guy to get tripped. You have to take care of your stick, it's a basic rule in hockey.