What it needs most in Year 2 is depth and realism: the return of the minors, more realistic feedback, and better rewards for real success. I expect this is just Year 1 for Be a Pro, so hopefully there are plenty of improvements to come down the road. In NHL, you're a top player almost immediately. In MLB The Show, you'll typically spend a full season or more in the minors, which makes it all the more satisfying when you finally make it into the big leagues. What NHL 21 seems to forget is that the journey to the majors matters as much as the destination. My coaches and teammates absolutely adored me, even when I was failing objectives. In less than a month, I was on the top line playing next to Sidney Crosby. I was drafted by the Penguins in the second round, scored one goal in the preseason, and ended up on Pittsburgh's second line. Put simply, there doesn't seem to be a way to get sent down to the minors. Where it gets into trouble is the way in which your actual level of play seems to have no bearing on how your avatar is treated. The rapid pace of the games-most of which can be completed in about 10 minutes-combine with dynamic objectives to create a solid sense of momentum. The presentation is stronger you can use the money you earn to buy perks like apartments and private staff, and there's a clear sense of progression. On the face of it, it's a reasonable upgrade from what was in NHL 20. After playing a quick qualifier tournament, you're whisked into the NHL, with your draft position depending on your play to that point. It's clearly patterned off MLB The Show's enormously successful Road to the Show mode: the dialogue isn't voiced, most of the communication is with your coach or your agent, and the "story" is told through radio broadcasts highlighting your most recent game. In the revamped Be a Pro, you play an up-and-coming rookie trying to break into the NHL. Play it enough, and NHL 21's Be a Pro actually starts to feel like a step backward for the series. But when I look at Be a Pro in particular, I'm reminded of how NHL 15 superficially looked much better than its predecessor, but stripped away a lot of what made it work in the first place. I don't make the comparison to NHL 15 lightly, as I consider it probably the worst sports sim of the past decade-an entry so bad that it didn't even include EASHL, far and away the franchise's most popular mode. It sets out to mirror the triumph of NHL 14, but it feels more like a desultory bookend to NHL 15, the entry with cuts that would make even the Ottawa Senators blush. To put it mildly, NHL 21 feels like a sloppy, rushed product this year, particularly when it comes to Be a Pro, which should be its star feature. Add in a decent presentation and some strong legacy features like EASHL-its popular online co-op team mode-and NHL 21 would seem primed for a good season.īut like the hyped contender that secretly has a few too many holes in its roster, NHL 21's weaknesses quickly become apparent once it's on the ice. But the biggest feature of them all is a revamped Be a Pro-something I've been calling for since the beginning of the generation. Franchise mode now has a trade deadline minigame that lets you make deals hour by hour, and there's a new arcade-style competition called Hockey Ultimate Team Rush. Building on last year's generally entertaining gameplay, NHL 21 adds the series's customary array of balance tweaks and updates, including a handful of new dekes. Its feature set is certainly promising enough. Clearly, EA is hoping that this year's release can be the PlayStation 4 / Xbox One equivalent of NHL 14-an entry that's still held in high esteem by fans thanks to its fast action, wild hits, and nostalgic tribute to NHL 94. As in 2013, NHL is once again skipping the generational transition, instead choosing to focus on putting out one last great entry on current systems. Like the rest of us, the series would prefer to pretend that 2020 never happened.īut where other sports sims are looking ahead, NHL is looking back. In EA's latest hockey sim, the season is commencing as normal the fans are in the stands, and the release of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 is still at least a year away. Like so many other sports games right now, NHL 21 exists in an odd parallel universe. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
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