2012/3/17: Xbox 360: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Major League Baseball 2K12, NHL 12

[VideoGameCritic]

My MW3 and NHL 12 reviews were a little late, but at least my Major League Baseball 2K12 review was on time.

[Carl1]

Dave---

One thing about NHL 12 (on ps3) there is a freezing issue that's been noted all over the EA boards and I have actually experienced on a number of occasions. I can't load a franchise if I'm connected to PSN. In fact, it's not guaranteed it works even if offline. Very slow loading, it's very annoying. Not sure if 360 has that issue however. I found the "Be a Legend" part to be annoying because I personally don't like the 1st person perspective. Plus it's yet another "Play the Mode and Unlock Players" situation that has become far too prevalent. I'd love to have Gretzky on the modern day Devils with Kovalchuk and Parise, but I'm not willing to spend hours playing that mode to do it.

The freezing issues kill this game for me. It's really infuriating to come home from work, fire up NHL 12 and have to wonder "will my game load?". Hopefully EA learns for NHL 13.

[Blueguy1]

The username thing is new. Never noticed it.

Anyways, I agree that Modern Warfare 3 is great. My friend JP and I play Spec Ops all the time and we never get bored of it! It's more of the same, but it's on a winning formula.

[andrew]

Can we expect to see a MLB 12 The Show PS3 review in the near future?

[Luke]

Yeah. I played some Modern Warfare 3 at a local game store today and was quite impressed with it. Seems like another solid title

[Orion1]

Interesting side note about 2K12:  it was also released on the PS2 and is speculated to be the final release for that system.

[Irenicus1]

Played MLB 2K12 at Target. I just assumed you'd be able to practice swing. I kept hitting all the buttons, twitchin' the analog stick & nothin'. Finally I figured it out & my wife wanted to leave.

[Newk]

Dave...in your review of NHL 12 you state:

Overall NHL 12 is just more of the same, and even die-hard hockey fans may have a hard time justifying this "upgrade".

Well, unfortunately, you have to upgrade because now EA shutsdown all support for the sports games after a year or two.  I popped in my copy of NHL '10, the game gets an update or patch, which prevents anyone from playing more than one franchise year and you can't even get the last roster update for that season.  Brilliant strategy to force an upgrade.  Yeah, it wasn't much different from NHL 10. 

Also, it is another blow to playing older versions of games.  At least with PC games you can download the latest patch for older games.  With the consoles, they can just "patch" you and say have a nice day, thanks for playing!  So what happens when someone goes to Gamestop and buys a copy of Madden 12 in year or two?  Please purchase an on-line pass...you only get to play one franchise year and you get no roster updates?!?!

I'm pretty sure in previous version you could continue a franchise to your hearts content and it just made up players and ratings.

EA...How I loathe you.

[ShadowAngel1]

Have to extremely disagree about NHL 12
- There's a autosave feature, it works quite fine, the Xbox 360 version froze 1 time but thankfully in my Be a Pro career it saved right before the game, so nothing was lost (Even though the game seem to have a problem with the date as the save is always in "2005" but who cares) Actually at the first start the game even tells you about the autosave feature, so how can that be ignored and then said "There's no autosave"?
Also i don't see anything wrong with the overall save feature? You don't even have to go to "My Pro" and "Save Pro", just press the forward button, go on Exit the game asks if you want to save or just exit, just go on "Save and exit", save the game, done. What's so difficult about that? It's done in 10 second and shouldn't even bore people with ADHD.

- The statistics during the game can be easily found in the pause menu. I actually like  that they included a ton of statistics you can go through and not just "home team" "away team" statistics. The only criticism is that there isn't a 3 Stars of the game presentation with those stars skating around after the game but that's just a minor complaint.

- There's a "turbo button": press down the left Analogstick to trigger the "Hustle", it's a lot more realistic than the "Bam! you skaters goes apesh*t and imitates the Ultimate Warrior entrance" like in so many hockey games before. Works great. Or you just use the simpler casual controls or the "NHL '94 controls" and your skater basically speeds up on his own. Works also really good too. Or maybe...maybe try to play more realistic, you know, passing around, waiting for the right spot...like in reality, like you actually see it in all hockey games played around the world. Because i doubt those hockey players have a built-in turbo function (except maybe Hagelin, Greening and Helm )

- Of course it's difficult to execute One-Timers. Ever seen a hockey game? How many One-Timers that actual work are in a game? 1-2? We're not in the 80's anymore with 7 goals per game and no defense. I like it that One-Timers are made a bit more uncommon and a bit more difficult to be executed. Unlike in NHL 2K7 for example where you scored 20 goals, 18 of those are One-Timers because it worked all the time. Also you miss on Slapshots if your press the button too long, a quick wristshot works a lot better but the goalie handles that more easily. NHL tries to be realistic. If you want unrealistic fun, go back to the NHL Hitz series, NHL Rock the Rink or Mutant League Hockey. It should be obvious that NHL 12 wants to be a simulation and not an Arcade game.

- You only have to be online for that Ultimate Team mode (same as on FIFA 12)  Everything else works offline, even though the Hockey Shop always wants you to go online, just skip the messages, it works offline just fine and saves everything. And except actual online gaming, everything is free of charge, just connect to the EA server and done. Also the roster updates are free of charge, something to mention in this day and age of DLC crazyness - and there were about 11 roster Updates so far, which i really like.

- I don't think there are many 'luck goals', there are crazy bounces, same as you see them in the NHL, they are rare and if hapen are quite funny.. If you think the AI is too bad, just change the Gameplay settings until you're satisfied, it's not that difficult. I've played about 200 games so far and i think there were only 2 lucky goals, one was a goal against were Jimmy Howard blocked the shot, puck flew up, somehow over him and he pushed it into his own net with the stick - i've  actually seen that in a NHL games before, so it's not even unrealistic.

- The fights aren't boring. Learn the controls, spike up the CPU difficulty and it's quite the challenge to even bring down the opponent. In Multiplayer it's even more fun. Best Hockey fights in a game ever, tops Blades of Steel easily.

They improved the gameplay, the AI is a lot better (they actually try to protect the slot and don't just stand around, goalie screening works great and while playing i even got the impression that guys like Holmstrom. like in reality, try to block the goalies view), the included Legends are great feature and i also like the Wayne Gretzky Interview videos when you beat his milestones in Be a Pro Also unlike the previous year the european leagues at least have the correct roster - for the first time and also get updated.
I don't like Electronic Arts at all but i have to say i'm impressed at just how much they put into the game, how much they tried to make it really good, all the features they included, it feels way more than just an update, like NHL 11 did.

Overall, i play Hockey game for 20 years, played everything and i think that NHL 12 is the most realistic Hockey game ever, the best EA NHL game since NHL 2002 and it also tops my previous 'most realistic' hockey game, NHL 2K5.

Honestly, that 'review' seems very lazy and ignorant. As if "i looked 5 minutes through the menus, played a game, wrote my 'review' in 2 minutes and didn't give a sh*t about it' was the motto. The mistakes can't be explained otherwise.
(which i noticed with a lot of those yearly sport game reviews, very lazy, very uninterested 'it's the same as last year' is a very common phrase and while it sometimes may be true, in cases like NHL 12 is just hilariously wrong)


[QUOTE=Carl]I found the "Be a Legend" part to be annoying because I personally don't like the 1st person perspective. Plus it's yet another "Play the Mode and Unlock Players" situation that has become far too prevalent. I'd love to have Gretzky on the modern day Devils with Kovalchuk and Parise, but I'm not willing to spend hours playing that mode to do it. [/QUOTE]

Do people really not spend any time with their games?
- You can use every camera angle in Be a Legend, i use the standard top-down classic perspective. It works.
- You can use the Legends from the very beginning in every game mode, except the Be-A-Legend mode. For Be-A-Legend you have to unlock them. Which is extremely simple. I took Jeremy Roenick, played 11 games and had everyone until Steve Yzerman unlocked, who i now use in a new career to unlock everyone else.
But the legends can be traded from the very beginning to every team, can be used for user-created teams and also the Legends team can be used.
(Of course maybe it's different on the PS3 but i doubt it, seeing as Mark had all the guys in his team on his Classic Game Room review video of the game that was released shortly after the release of the game)

[Carl1]

Shadow----

Well I stand corrected in that regard. I tried it within the first few weeks of getting the game when it came out and was totally unaware you could switch the camera mode (maybe my memory is foggy, I'll admit as much). Maybe now I'll take a second look since it's early and I'm bored on a Sunday. Is there anyway to use them in a Be a GM mode? It's definitely cheap but as I said, would be pretty fun to try out.