Reader, I’m gonna level with you: I don’t care for sports. The most I’ve ever been invested in a sport was reading about Gryffindor win the Inter-House Quidditch Cup or guiding my misfits to freedom in Pyre. I grew up in small-town America, where football, soccer, and baseball were a way of life. I tried my hand at soccer and enjoyed it, but that enjoyment quickly soured to resentment thanks to bullying. That resentment eventually manifested in a complete disinterest in all things sports. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself curious about some forms of athleticism and even more curious about what video games do with various sports – how developers present and package sports, what they choose to focus on, and whether or not they’re accommodating to newcomers.
I decided that it was time for me to fill in a particularly deep genre gap for and play some sports games. Given that I live in the snowy fantasy land that is Minnesota and that I love watching people beat the hell out of each other, hockey was the obvious go-to: the one that would lead me into the shallow end of the icy pond and show me how to doggy paddle. With that impression in mind, I picked up NHL 19 and decided to spend a week playing it and writing about my experience for my fellow scrubs who are intimidated by the genre but also curious.
Here’s how my week with NHL 19 is going, in all its misery and glory.
Day 1: Interference
How hard can hockey be? There’s a stick. There’s a puck. There’s a goal. You get the puck into the goal that is not your goal. Simple. As the title screen loads for NHL 19, I’m feeling good about this experience, especially since the first menu that greets me is an accessibility loadout that lets you adjust sliders and options to tailor the game to your skill level.
How kind! Why yes, I will choose rookie. How nice of the game to ease me in. So far, so good. Let’s load into the main game now.
Oh. Okay. That’s a lot. Wow. That’s … hockey’s just one game, right? Intimidating, but okay. I’ve got this.
Let’s do franchise mode. I’ve always wanted to own a franchise. I would have settled for Dairy Queen, but a hockey team is good. Sure.
Uhhhhhh.
Why is there so much? WHY?
I just wanted to hit a puck with a stick.
Okay. We’re just … we’re just gonna head out of this. That’s for the best, I think.
Heading back into the main screen, I see a season mode far below franchise mode. Loading into that, I find something more in line with what I expected: You take a team through an entire season of NHL play, with far less emphasis on management-driven systems (though you can still trade players). I am a simple, impulsive man so I choose the Minnesota Wild for no other reason than I live in Minnesota. Our managing editor Matt Bertz later tells me this is a grievous error, and upon further examination of the team’s hideous Mountain Dew-like color scheme, I realize he might be right. But we’re here, reader. You, me, and the Minnesota Wild. We’ve committed to this. We’re going to ride this train to hell.
I load into the first match and am paired up against the Chicago Blackhawks. Within seconds of the game, the basics become obvious: Jump from body to body as you pursue the puck down the ice, with two buttons dedicated to hitting the puck. One is for wrist shots (when you’re aiming for accuracy over speed), the other for snap shots (vice versa). The first of the three periods is brutal. I don’t get scored on, but I’m having a hell of a time just keeping control of the puck. The few times I do manage, I’m slapping it against the steel of the goal or watching it sail smoothly into the goalie’s hand.
The second period is even worse. As I fumble through memorizing the control scheme, the Blackhawks get a few snap shots off on me, scoring two goals within seconds of one another. Booooooo. I’m just not enjoying this experience at all. The physics are weird, the controls seemingly unresponsive, and the commentators are so annoying. I hit the last intermission and wonder how anyone could find this game fun.
Loading into the third period, I quickly find my answer. The adjustment period finishes, and my fingers go where they’re supposed to when they’re supposed as I nimbly jump between characters and pass the puck back and forth. After the failures of the previous periods, I finally develop a strategy other than desperately passing and shooting when we’re all bunched together at the opposing goal. We zig and zag down the line, passing pucks between Blackhawk players and then shooting a few feet from the goal. The first few attempts don’t pan out, but as the clock ticks down to three minutes, my proper lad and Wild captain Mikko Koivu SLAMS the puck from a distance and sends it soaring into the corner of the net. The crowd goes wild. The commentators call it a howitzer. My players all cheer and hug as fans stamp their feet and our weirdo mascot does an awkward dance. I notice dimly seconds after I’ve done it that I’ve put my fist in the air and hollered in celebration.
We still lose, of course, but that moment of exhilaration makes it all worthwhile. I went from hopeless idiot to hopeless idiot who’s capable of scoring a single goal! I’m like Rocky, but also better than Rocky, because I didn’t get hit in the face.
Eat it, Balboa.
Day 2: Three’s Company
Reader, I’m in deep. After several games in season mode, with a fair share of wins and losses, I’ve started keeping a page of notes. It looks like this:
I think I might like hockey. A lot. At least the video game version of it. The initially frustrating controls have become exercises in mastering grace in twitchy situations. The frustration of clanging the puck against the steel frame of the gal over and over again upended by the uproarious exhilaration of finally sending the puck ripping into the net. There’s also the gradual enjoyment I’m having of learning terms as new penalties and phrases flash across screen, causing me to shake my head and ask myself what the heck “offside” and “slashing” mean.
My favorite games are often those that teach their rules in interesting ways, with lessons often connected to an engaging progression system. Challenges in games like Destiny or Far Cry that reward you for using tools from your offensive arsenal in certain ways are a great example of that. However, what I love about playing NHL 19 as a total newbie is how compelling this onslaught of new terms and rules are. It’s overwhelming at first to a degree, with me having to constantly stop and do a few seconds worth of research to see why a play of mine got flagged or to understand why the game’s praising me for pulling off a certain kind of shot or move. However, the satisfaction of constantly learning something new is engaging.
To me, it’s a different strand of what I love about inhabiting a universe like Mass Effect. Yes, a sports game is entirely different than a sci-fi RPG but both experiences come down to parading a series of questions before the player, at least for someone who’s new to both games, like me. Discovering the answers to “Why do the Geth invade worlds and who built the Citadel?” produce the same kind of entertainment as learning the different intricacies of hockey — the rules, the great players, the various reputations attached to different teams. Both experiences, as thematically separate as they are, are united by learning and developing an appreciation for the culture you’re inhabiting as a player. It doesn’t matter if that culture is sports-focused or an elaborate fantastical universe — you still have to acclimate yourself to those worlds.
Garrus would probably be a Sharks fan, yeah? Yeah.
It also feels nice to win, of course. That’s an obvious statement, but if you play games a lot, you often become desensitized to doing well in a game. However, as someone dabbling in a genre I’m not experienced in, it really does feel like I’m pulling off a magic track anytime I nail a shot or even pull off a saucer pass assist one of my teammates turns into a game-winning slap shot. I’m not great, of course. I doubt I’d last long in an online match against another player, but I’m outwitting and outpacing the A.I. more often than not.
However, as we discovered last time, NHL 2019 is a game with a lot of modes. Eventually I decide to pull out of season mode and try some other ones. After all, I want to do more than just play hockey. I want to explore all of NHL 19’s offerings and see how many variations it can create from the base game and how compelling all those are. With that in mind, I pick at random and load into NHL Threes.
What is Threes? The easiest way to think about it is a more arcadey version of the base game, hockey’s answer to NBA Jam. Threes reduces the players from five to three, speeds up the clock, shrinks the ice rink, gets rid of a lot of the rules and penalties, and introduces a whole ton of modifiers. The mode introduces randomness, like a player on one of the teams being replaced halfway through the match by a mascot, and is inherently more wacky than anything else in NHL 19. The announcer is more of the BoomShakaLakka variety than an ESPN talking head, demanding the audience make noise or obnoxiously yelling about how you just missed your shot. As fun as this all sounds, I’m not really a big fan of the mode.
The reduced player-set up combined with a smaller rink and sped up clock are enticing changes that, on their own, make for a great way to play a version of hockey that whittles down the game to its basics. However, the random elements really disrupt the game in a way that’s not fun or fair. For example, random periods will have “money puck” modifiers, meaning the next goal will give the team that scores it two points, not one. While this might make for an exciting upset win, I think the unbalancing of the game in this mode makes it lose a lot of its luster for me. Also, I’m not good at it, which means it’s automatically bad. Obviously.
Join me again tomorrow as I delve into NHL 19’s character creation-based mode, The World Of Chel, and embrace all its horrors and delights.
Source: Gameinformer