Casey Jones

This is not a good game. EA has a history of removing features and then highlighting them as brand new features when they bring them back. You could break the glass, hit players into the bench and use face button passing 10+ years ago, so I have no idea why two generations of console later these are considered selling points. The actual new features are even worse though. EA has never made it easy on goalies in the past, but this year their goal was to actively make playing goalie a miserable experience. Between the goalie tethering and new pressure system that reduces your ability to make saves, EA really made sure you will never have fun in net. Is it fun to play defense? Nope. Poke checking makes it so that you come to a complete stop. So hitting becomes your only real tool since stick lifting has been a meme in this game for over a year now. Unfortunately for defensemen, reverse hitting has never been easier. So forward might be the only position where you can have fun. Well, yes and no. It is significantly better than the other positions, but EA really covered all the bases to make sure you won't have too much fun. Thanks to the goal celebration cinematic, scoring a goal feels more like a burden. I feel like every year they promise that the game will be more realistic but we just get increasingly more over-the-top arcade nonsense. How many lacrosse goals happened in the NHL last season? My guess would be under 5. So to have been in several games now where multiple lacrosse goals get scored just feels like EA is holding up a middle finger to everyone that just wants a decent hockey game. EA does not care about this franchise, they do not care about their customers, and they do not care about hockey. But hey, at least we got battle passes, right?

If I worked on this game, I would be embarrassed to admit it. There's an ongoing joke that the NHL games don't improve much from year to year because EA doesn't have any competition forcing them to be better. Most years it feels like you are paying a bunch of money just for a roster update. However, this year they actually managed to regress. While other sports games are striving for realism, the NHL games have become downright arcade style. We are talking about pokechecking the same player 5 straight times and he keeps getting it back with no issues. Hitting has never felt worse either. A player putting his body into someone else's is going to be impactful no matter how tall or heavy those players are. EA decided that a person who is 5'10" and 200 pounds hitting someone is equal to a gentle breeze though. The most common interceptions I see are ones where a defenseman has his back turned to the puck the entire time, never looks back, but manages to pick off the pass cleanly. This is not a rare occurence, this is the majority of interceptions. I watch a lot of hockey and I can tell you that I never see a situation where a guy gets pokechecked repeatedly but keeps it anyway, guys hitting other guys and it having zero impact, and defensemen making interceptions without ever seeing the puck. These things never happen in real life yet they happen dozens of times in every single game of NHL 23. I guess I just wanted either a realistic hockey game or at least a balanced unrealistic hockey game. I was left with an absolute mess of an arcade game. Even with the game being 50% off, I got ripped off.