NHL 14 Demo

About 5 days ago, EA Sports released the demo for NHL 14, which comes out in its entirety on September 10th. Since I am a guy who has only played NHL 2005 and 12, but really needs a new game, I decided to give the demo a try.

The first thing I noticed was the player movement. Even since NHL 12, it has changed a lot.  The controls are still the same but it looks and feels a lot different. This isn't a bad thing, it just takes some getting used to. During the quick play game, the first few minutes felt a bit odd. However, after a few minutes on the free skate mode, I had gotten the skating pretty well under control.

The fighting engine, which has been widely publicized by EA, was indeed very fun and a huge improvement from the other games. It took about 5 minutes to get into my first fight, after Brent Seabrook laid a beautiful hit on Brad Marchand, which promted the CPU-controlled Johnny Boychuk to come over and drop the gloves. Instead of the two fighters being transported to an empty rink with literally no players on it except for the two fighters like in the previous games, you get to stay in the game and duke it out. This time you also don't have to fight from the player's point of view, like in the other games, but the camera angle stays relatively the same.

In general, I would say there are some minor improvements that make a big difference in the game. I am definitely getting it, since my copy of NHL 12 is all scratched up and constantly freezes/glitches, so I really need a new game. If you're someone who has N a more recent game that works fine, it's really up to you to decide whether you want it or not. I would highly recommend downloading the demo to get a taste of the gameplay.