When the goal horn blasts while I'm playing a round of NHL 15, I'm not usually the one setting it off. Ever since the shift to a more simulation-based game, my friends have been much better than me at EA NHL series.
It's not that I'm bad, I just hit a plateau at some point. I wasn't sure why I kept losing face-offs, or why I couldn't penetrate a specific team's defensive line, so I'd try new things; sometimes they'd work, but even then I wouldn't completely understand why. But after spending several hours with NHL 16 and its visual on-ice trainer at a recent hands-on preview event, I started to get a handle on what it takes to succeed against highly skilled opponents.
"[The on-ice trainer is] an adaptive system that starts off by teaching you the very, very basics." says Sean Ramjagsingh, the lead producer of the NHL franchise.
It seems like an integrated, static tutorial at first, but the visual trainer is surprisingly dynamic. It augments other players and the ice with hints, pass suggestions, and a shot lane. Once you've performed certain actions enough times, like poke-checking your opponent and winning face-offs, the hints hovering over the skaters will start to disappear.
"It'll show you how many times you need to complete pushing up on the right stick to make that go away," Ramjagsingh says. "You do it three times, that goes away, and it takes you to the next piece of feedback, telling you how to do a wrist shot."
I did, at times, find that I needed the trainer hints to stick around a little longer, especially with face-offs; thankfully, you can turn different parts of the trainer on and off, making it possible for the visual assistant to stay permanently. Because of this, I worried I'll become dependent and never take some of these training wheels off due to how it simplifies parts of the game.
Despite my concerns, the on-ice trainer helped me figure out exactly how the face-offs work. First off, the on-screen hint will let you know exactly when to go for the puck in order to retrieve it. The trainer lets you know your timing and the reason you won or lost the puck; even if you have good timing, the opposing player could have a higher face-off skill, overpowering your skater to secure control. This let me know that I did all the right things, so I wasn't discouraged from taking the same approach in my next encounter.
The shooting was another aspect of the trainer that I found pretty useful. When you're in front of the opposing team's net with the puck in tow, a cone appears, starting at your skater's stick and ending at the goal line. If there's a good scoring opportunity, blue lanes will indicate the best route for the puck to take. This all changes based on where you, the goalie, and the rest of the players are situated; if you have a skater screening the goalie while you set up, there's going to be a much larger shot lane for you to take advantage of; alternatively, the shot lane shrinks if opposing skaters are blocking your view.
No comments:
Post a Comment