Matt Leis (SpitzerFX)

I'm a huge hockey fan, play a bunch of other EA Sports games and usually do Be a Pro careers. I received this game for free with Playstation Plus and was excited - uninstalled it after a few days. Started out in Be a Pro and made a character. About 80% of the faces in character creation look deformed so I stuck with the default. Tried to set my Play by Play name only to realize there's no ability to listen to them in the menu so I had to just guess how the commentators would pronounce it. Finally got into the game and it's unbearable. Every poke check from any angle results in the other player falling, giving you a tripping penalty. Any time you brush up against another player on the ice, you seem to get stuck to them and neither of you move anywhere until you pull the stick directly away. Controls are very unintuitive and feel stiff, making it really hard to execute body checks, dekes, etc. Faceoffs have been absolutely gutted and feel impossible to win. AI is terrible and frequently pass the puck into the boards or just... stop controlling it for no reason. They often score on themselves just by fumbling with the puck. Most offensive rushes end up with at least one player running into the goalie and in my first three games in Be a Pro, we had five different occasions where a goal was overturned due to goalie interference. Even though you can adjust most of these issues by tweaking the game sliders... the sliders don't save between game resets and turning off your console, so you have to set them every time you play. I paid nothing for this game and I still won't play it because it feels like a chore.