Why is nhl 13 so hard

Dodging and throwing jabs is always fun, but I wish EA Sports would make it a little more realistic. Some good additions to throw in for the future game:. Quick Term Solution: Have fun and be creative with the fights—we are ready for anything other than jab, block and dodge. After all the games I've owned, I can honestly say the only game that has crashed or frozen more than NHL 12 was Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 was one of the most amazing games ever made for PS3, and its graphics were unreal, only maybe outdone by Final Fantasy 13 , so I understood why the game might have frozen every once in awhile. NHL 12 seems to freeze for no good reason, and at the worst times possible. NHL 12 has had a penchant for freezing on me with less than a minute left in games, both online and single player.

If NHL 12 was like Assassins Creed where the system had to load the entire city of Rome and anywhere from 10 to characters at a time, I might understand the freezing issues. In NHL 12 , having 10 characters out on the ice in a closed environment isn't even comparable.

In my personal opinion, making something so simple so complicated was EA's biggest failure of all. Long Term Solution: Run the game through some actual tests before it's released.

NHL 13 should never freeze on you. NHL 12 's issues were absolutely unacceptable. BLUF: Goalies need to stop automatically handling pucks in the restricted zone. How many times have you had a goalie with a high puck playing frequency like Martin Brodeur go out into the trapezoid and collect the puck on the edge of the restricted zone?

Does anybody actually do this anymore in real life? If you watched NHL games this season, you might have seen one of the penalties, maybe. Goalies who don't normally don't leave the crease and play the puck just go right behind the net and either slow down the puck for their defensemen, or swat it along the glass and boards.

Realistically, no goalie in the NHL even comes close to committing these mindless penalties anymore. Instead of EA fixing this problem where you're constantly in the box for two minutes, they focused their energy on having your goalie be able to skate out to center ice and have a fight with the other goalie in a major overreaction to the Johnson vs.

Quick Term Solution: Make it so the goalie cannot handle the puck in the restricted zone unless the player assumes direct control and decides to commit the penalty. FIFA made a major change for the edition and numerous minor tweaks to all aspects of the product. Soccer is actually surprisingly fast now, and the game reflects that. Hockey is fast, too — very fast, in fact.

The worst part is that this no longer feels like real life hockey. Sign up to receive the daily top stories from the Financial Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Financial Post Top Stories will soon be in your inbox. We encountered an issue signing you up.

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Please click confirm to resume now. Sponsored Offers. Add to this equation the vastly improved AI on both sides of the puck , and the computer-controlled opponents and teammates no longer impede the creation of a realistic simulation.

There are obviously some inconsistencies depending on context, but a vast majority of the time, both defense and offense will anticipate plays and move to either help or hinder their development. Trying to force a puck through the feet of two defensemen is now as foolish an act as it is in the NHL, and risky stretch passes more often find themselves picked off than creating breakaways.

The closer approximation of reality speaks for itself in nearly all aspects of the game, which is the source of the game's greatest qualities, and the most frustrating issues that players will inevitably encounter.

Even in last year's edition, several gameplay mechanics were more arcade-y for the sake of fun, giving players an edge against the AI. EA Sports has addressed several of these all at once, making past strategies no longer successful, and demanding that even the most seasoned players start back at square one. But more often than not, the changes are made in the name of a closer simulation, which may or may not come as much comfort to those who find themselves frustrated out of the gate.

The only real complaint that could be leveled at NHL 13 is that by building a completely new framework for the series going forward - easily a bigger jump than the previous generation of consoles to current - the demand placed on the player is larger than most will expect. Since the set of mechanics that the players must grasp, and master, in order to compete with an AI that understand them all inherently has grown, the challenge facing the average player is far more significant.

That being said, the NHL series to date has had the shallowest of learning curves among EA Sports titles, if any at all, so challenging veterans to actually quit messing around with one-timers and start playing properly is an admirable mission.

If players prefer a game that allows them to make bullet passes through opponents, force their way into the zone without having the puck picked off their stick, and run up the score against an opponent that is throttled by settings - since the computer was inexplicably capable of scoring ten goals on fifteen shots - then NHL 13 won't be as enjoyable.

But for the fans of hockey, who want to play a slower-paced, calculated, tight-checking match that can go down to the wire as accurately as the real thing, then NHL 13 's basic gameplay and AI is a dream come true.