NHL 18 Trial Available For EA Access Subscribers, Post Your Impressions Here

[Steve_OS]

The NHL 18 EA Access trial is available now for EA Access subscribers, exclusively for the...

Written By: Steve Noah

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[GrandMaster B]

Why does it say release date is 9/21? Should be 9/15. 9/12 for early edition. Weird.

[BigDisk]

Any feedback?

[csamuelsvt]

Apparently there are out of town scores in franchise mode during games. The scores will pop up every now and then. Commentary apparently does not discuss, however. Cool touch I read on another message board.

Don't think this was in NHL 17?

[snc237]

At it's basic level nhl 18 is the same game as 17. If you play the game on a casual level your going to wonder what actually changed.*Skating is a little tighter and refined and they're some new dekes however they are really only for advanced users as some of them are awfully complicated. On defence you now have full control of your stick and now you just don't jab at the puck for poke checks. Now this is still viable but learn how to use the stick for precision will give you an advantage going forward. The A.I. has seen some love but not the love we were wanting. The CPU moves the puck around much better up ice and is smarter on odd man rushs. However what the community wanted,* better neutral zone play defensively and just more aggressive A.I. hasn't been addressed. The A.I. took a step this year too bad we wanted a leap.*


Then there's the new 3-3 mode. While fun with some friends or just a quick break from a competitive mode I don't see this being a break out mode for the series nor * do I see it having lasting appeal. The other modes Like HUT are more less the same but now with added challenges so you can earn coins/packs that way.* GM mode you can now start a franchise from scratch using authentic expansion league rules. However this is only able to be done at the beginning of your franchise mode.*


Graphically nothing has changed. There are a few new camera cuts but that's it. I'm assuming this is due to next year NHL will be running on the frostbite engine. Madden and Fifa also had minimum graphical changes the year before the new engine was implemented (with madden looking especially sharp this year, with its first go on frostbite).*


All in all this seems like a bridge between NHL 17 and NHL 19. While I enjoyed NHL 17 and thought it was the best game in the series, NHL 18 doesn't really change much up, as it only refines and tunes aspects of its game rather then add or redefine any of its main modes or gameplay. NHL 18 might be a stop gap till next years game but it still plays a great game of hockey and heck it has EASHL so can't go wrong with that.*


Early review score 7.5/10

[SocialAssassin]

5/10 for me. They basically added the NHL 3 on 3 game from NHL 13 and called it NHL 3s. The computer scores at will, on any shot. I am glad I paid 5 bucks to try this so I could save myself 80 bucks later.

[Tomba]

I've pretty much played every EA access NHL game up to now

And I have to say this this is probably the best playing NHL that I've played since EA axis started putting out NHL on it

The game play smooth the broadcast angle camera is almost perfect and there's really not much wonky animation going on this is probably the cleanest hockey game that I played

If only they had a winter classic mode I would buy it

[shogunofharlem3]

Played 3 games. Same as 17 except I saw 3 very weird goals from behind the net that hit a new defensive stick blocking the lane that shot backwards right by the goalie. Very weird.

I found the AI still skates differently that we can. They take the puck when they want, they poke check the millisecond you try to shoot and the pokes checks keep going to them all the time.

Gotta play with the sliders. But I thought that there was online coop this year in all modes. Maybe I misunderstood that. But I fired up Franchise, no way to invite a friend, same with season. That makes this a definite pass for me at the $60 price point.

I'll try again tomorrow after some slider tweaks