NHL 12/13 Customization

[FlyingDonutz]

Alright, I'm sure some of you have played the EA Sports game, NHL 12. Now I'm sure many of you that have played the game have played as or against the NHL Legends Team. And how atrocious is it? Wow. Crosby, Stamkos, Malkin, Luongo, the Sedins, I could go on and on... they AREN'T legends! No Espositos, Brodeur, Hasek, MacInnis, Orr, Jagr, Sakic, Francis, the list goes on and on!

So I've started to create a Legends team on the game itself. Now after creating a few skaters and goalies, when I go to look through the hometowns to make it the proper one, (because I like to be accurate), I noticed there are no Parry Sound, or Sault Ste. Marie. Which is absolutely ridiculous. Seriously. No SSM? Best seeder city for hockey. Tony and Phil Esposito. Marty Turco. Ron Francis. All big, big names that were born there. Wayne Fricken' Gretzky came out of their OHL team. Uhh, Let's see, Joe Thornton? does that ring a bell? Really stupid if you ask me, not only because I live here but also because it's quite obvious that it belongs in that list.

Now to the point. The legends team I made has this lineup.

Lemieux-Gretzky-Howe
Sakic-Messier-Jagr
Yzerman-Esposito-Francis
Robitaille-Gilmour-Hull

Bourque-Macinnis
Lidstrom-Orr
Chelios-Lapointe

Hasek
Roy
Esposito
Brodeur

I've had to make most of these players because they aren't on the legends team. Other than that, I do love the customization.

For NHL 13, however, I'd love to see these few things.
Colour Wheel
Making your own logos for teams
Customizable play-by-play names (like the dead 2k series)
Customizable arenas (like NHL 04)


Really though, I think EA is doing a good job besides the few things I mentioned.. and how about a bit more attention to the NHL series? FIFA, MLB, and Madden are way ahead of this series in terms of graphics, physics, and customization.

I guess us Canucks are the only ones who play it anyways

[kirant]

NHL12 can be realistic, but it takes a bit of homebrewing in the settings to get it right.

The way I have it set, players will fumble the puck a lot, passes will miss their mark on good occasion, the AI is required to play their bottom 9 forwards, and my "throw everything at the net" strategy requires a bit of work to get the crash and bang shots home (whereas under the defaults, you can probably run up a 9-2 score in an All-Star difficulty game)

That being said, I'd like:
- Customizable arenas. I miss being able to play in the Saddledome with my custom teams
- The return of nicknames as a possible name choice. I'm not sure you played many NHL 2000 era games, but I loved being able to have player choices like "The Hammer"...especially in the Legends mode, where you could create Dave Schultz
- Customizable goalie masks. I realize how painful this would be online, as you'd end up with endless dick masks, but I think it'd be fun if you could customize your goalie mask for offline games...I hate most of the default masks and, let's be honest, you can customize everything else about your player. Honestly, I'd probably be a sucker and end up paying for NHL12 + offline mask creation...
- A bit more playing around with the team in create-a-team. Unfortunately, this mode is pretty much obsolete...even NHL 06 had better team customization in the form of goal horns and arena naming.

[OutOfTheCube]

I won't be bothering with the NHL series this year unless they make significant improvements. They spend so much time adding new game modes and features that lots of people don't check out while Be A GM, which you think would be a critical mode, has seen literally zero improvements in the last three years. Oh right, they added RFA status. But I still can't even offer a player a contract extension in the middle of the season, among dozens of other complaints. This extends to all the modes... they make it, throw it in, and then never work on improving it. Just throw the same thing in next year with another bare bones, mostly broken mode. Don't get me started on Be A Pro... I try to play it every time, and every time I'm the leading scorer of the whole league as an 18-year old, only to get sent down because I only got one assist in the last two games.

EA Sports NHL. Jack of all trades, master of none.

[kirant]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

EA Sports NHL. Don't ask us to do anything. Go online and have fun.

Fixed your post. They have semi-decent online abilities...offline, you're limited to basically BaP, which is horribly broken, and BaGM, which still hasn't fixed salary issues from years ago.

Better than before though I guess, where you could find Pat Falloon on rosters despite having been out of the NHL for some time.