What a difference a week can make. Whereas just a handful of days ago director Patty Jenkins was holding firm on her hopes that Wonder Woman 1984 would open in theaters on Christmas rather than streaming services–its sixth release date, half coming before COVID-19–she is now immediately acknowledging how unpredictable everything is during the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking with Variety, Wonder Woman 1984‘s Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian) said, “As far as movie releases are concerned, and the tremendous way that the industry is having to improvise around these circumstances, nothing is surprising. We’re all getting used to things shifting day-to-day, hour-to-hour, you know? That’s what we’re all dealing with.”
Jenkins, in the same story, also spoke about the lack of control she is feeling about the movie, which was originally supposed to be released November 1, 2019.
“It’s unbelievably surreal,” Jenkins said. “The biggest surreality about it is it’s supposed to be one adventure, right? You sign on to the movie, you write the movie, you direct the movie, you make the movie, the movie comes out, and you move on. Instead, like, I spent three years doing one thing, seven days a week, and then I just popped out of it to just nothing. No evidence of that [work].”
While Jenkins remains hopeful about the Christmas Day release, she also adds that nobody “can be confident” about anything in this moment, adding, “It’s super weird to go from making a movie with such detail and being so excited for the experience of people getting to share in that with you, and then just going on to cleaning your house and cooking… We just don’t know what the course of COVID is going to be like.”
The sequel comes from a script co-written by Jenkins (Monster), Geoff Johns (Birds of Prey), and David Callaham (Ant-Man). It stars Gal Godot (Fast & Furious), Chris Pine (Star Trek), Kristen Wiig (Ghostbusters), and Pascal. In a visit to the set over the summer, we learned that the filmmakers don’t consider this a “traditional sequel.”
Following the release of five Star Wars movies in just four years, things have now slowed down for the franchise. There’s no news of another movie, and production is yet to start on the upcoming Obi-Wan and Cassian Andor shows. Luckily, fans have the second season of the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian to look forward to next month. Now star Pedro Pascal and showrunner Jon Favreau have spoken about the future of the series, and whether we will ever see a big-screen version.
In an interview with Variety, Pascal admitted that while the show’s stunning visuals would look great at the theater, he was cautious about changing what makes The Mandalorian so good. “I think that the work is so beautiful that I would love for that to be held by a big screen experience,” he said. “But it seems to work so well [on TV] that also I’m not sure it’s something that I would want corrupted by any kind of change, you know? I mean, I certainly know that the challenge can be met. It’s not like these people don’t have the experience. If anybody can do it, they can!”
Favreau stated that the media landscape has shifted so much that the difference between movies and streaming was no longer an obvious one. “The line is blurring now,” he said. “Things that you would have only seen in the movie theater, you’re seeing on streaming, and I think it could go the other way as well. We’re definitely open to [a movie], and excited to see where the story leads us and have that flexibility–because there’s no rulebook now.”
The showrunner also spoke about The Mandalorian Season 3, and revealed that he expected to start production before the end of 2020, and that the show’s innovative use of technology could help avoid the risks of shooting in a pandemic. “We’re operating under the assumption that we’ll be able to go forward,” Favreau said. “We’re in very small situations and oftentimes we have a lot of characters in masks. And we also have a lot of digital work that augments things. So we’re a show that’s probably well-equipped to be flexible based on the protocols that are emerging surrounding work restarting.”
The Mandalorian Season 2 premieres on Disney+ on October 30. The show sees the return of several cast members from Season 1, including Gina Carano as Cara Dune, Carl Weathers as Greef, and Giancarlo Esposito as Moff Gideon. New additions to the cast include Michael Biehn, Rosario Dawson, and Katee Sackhoff. Check out the most recent trailer, plus these character posters.
In other Mandalorian news, HasLabs–Hasbro’s crowdfunding site–has preorders available for the Razor Crest ship. It will cost $350, but it is exceptionally detailed, containing every nook and cranny we’ve seen on the Disney+ series. And speaking of Disney+, October has plenty coming to the streaming service from Star Wars to Marvel to original content and more.
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Marvel’s Avengers is slated to get a growing roster of heroes, but the start of that expansion has been pushed back a bit. The first new character, Kate Bishop aka Hawkeye, will no longer be coming this month.
Crystal Dynamics announced the delay in a blog post detailing various changes to its roadmap. It refers to this as a “slight delay,” but didn’t give a new release target for the new character.
“Moving forward, we intend to have a fixed, predictable patching cycle to ensure all new content meets both our and your high standards and has time for extensive internal testing,” the post reads. “We know fans are hungry for new content, but delivering a fun experience is our priority. With this in mind, we’ve decided to push Kate Bishop’s Operation launch back a bit, out of October. We’re sorry for this slight delay, but we are dedicated as a team to quality first.”
Kate Bishop’s operation was to be the first of a two-part Hawkeye storyline that would then add Clint Barton in November. The blog didn’t give word as to whether this would also impact the release of Barton as its second character, but the post implies that both will still be out before 2021. The studio promises next year will bring the biggest expansion yet, with a new hero, region, and narrative arc.
The blog also announced delays to the next-gen versions of the game, which are being pushed into 2021. The current-gen version will still run better on PS5 and Xbox Series X and Series S, with higher frame rates and faster load times. As a make-good to fans, the game will offer a package of 1500 credits, 7000 units, 250 upgrade modules, and 20 DNA keys, plus a Sarah Garza-inspired nameplate. You can claim that reward starting October 22.
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Marvel’s Avengers has been successful, at least in terms of initial sales, for publisher Square Enix thus far. However, the game has seen its player-counts falling and criticism for bugs and lack of endgame content–and we don’t mean the movie. Because developer Crystal Dynamics is working to address the game’s issues, the next-gen versions for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PS5 have been delayed to 2021.
Crystal Dynamics said it wants to deliver a “next-gen experience showcasing all that this game is meant to be” in a blog post announcing the decision. You will still be able to play the PS4 or Xbox One versions on the new systems and can experience better frame rates and faster loading times, and your progress will also carry over. Once the next-gen-specific versions are released, it will be a free upgrade.
Several changes requested by fans are being worked into future updates, as well. These include a ping system, the ability to replay the Reassemble campaign, a high-contrast mode, hero icon visibility adjustments, mission reward clarity, and better enemy attack indicators. PC stability is also being worked on, with GPUs apparently being the source of many crashes thus far.
GameSpot’s Phil Hornshaw gave the game a 7/10 in our Marvel’s Avengers review. While he enjoyed the depth of combat and characters’ different styles, he didn’t like how live-service elements were implemented and encountered plenty of bugs.
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If you saw our review of last year’s SteelSeries Arctis 9X and were bummed that the wireless gaming headset was designed for the Xbox One and you aren’t on Team Green, then the SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless is for you. This wireless headset offers 2.4GHz wireless connectivity for PC and PlayStation gamers along with simultaneous Bluetooth for listening to music or making phone calls. And with steel construction, plush cushioning, and ski-goggle headband, the Arctis 9 Wireless boasts the build quality and comfort we’ve come to expect from SteelSeries. Does this pricey $199.99 dual wireless headset deliver the sound to make it a top headset for gamers?
With its ski-goggle headband and large, oval earcups, the Arctis 9 looks and feels like previous SteelSeries efforts. The gaming headset has an understated look that lends some versatility; it looks equally at home in front of your gaming PC or PS4 as well as on the move connected to your phone. It avoids obvious gamer design flourishes in favor of a nearly all-black look. The earcups feature matte black surfaces, and the cloth headband is black with thin, white accents.
If you are looking for colorful, pulsing RGB lighting, you’ll need to look elsewhere. The only lights on the Arctis 9 serve a function rather than simply adorning the form. A small LED indicator on the right earcup blinks white when connected wirelessly and blue when connected via Bluetooth (and alternates white and blue when connected to both).
When charging, the LED glows green when the headset has more than half of its battery life remaining. It glows yellow when it’s between 20% and 50% and red when it’s between 10% and 20%. When there’s less than 10% battery life remaining, it blinks red. There’s also an LED light on the retractable microphone that glows red when the mic is muted.
The Arctis 9 Wireless connects to your PC or PlayStation via a USB wireless transmitter. The headset and transmitter come paired out of the box, but I needed to update the firmware from each after installing the SteelSeries Engine software. Even with a firmware update, I was updated and up and running in less than five minutes.
The wireless transmitter has a switch on its underside to toggle between PC and PlayStation use. (The headset works with PS4 and will work with the PS5 at launch.) The Arctis 9 Wireless can also be used with a Nintendo Switch in docked mode.
At 13.4 ounces, the Arctis 9 Wireless is a heavy headset but feels lighter than it is thanks to the ski-goggle strap that creates a suspension feeling that prevents the metal headband from pressing down on the top of your head. There’s a Velcro fastener on the end of the ski-goggle strap that provides a minimal amount of size adjustment, but this large-headed reviewer had no trouble finding a comfortable fit.
The large, oval earcups are heavily padded, and the padding is covered in a soft, breathable fabric. Their large size minimizes the odds that your ear will be pinched against your headset and will likely fit inside the earcup. While comfort is top-notch, the large earcups tend to get warm over long stretches.
Most of the controls are located on the back of the right earcup, where you’ll find a volume dial, microphone mute button, power button and Bluetooth button. Below the buttons on the right earcup is a micro-USB port for charging along with a 3.5mm jack to share audio with another headset.
The retractable mic sits on the front of the left earcup and a ChatMix dial is around the back that lets you adjust the volume between game and chat audio.
With the SteelSeries Engine app, you can customize a few settings when the Arctis 9 Wireless is connected via the USB charging cable to your PC. The software is easy to use in large part because the software supplies a limited amount of customization. You can tweak the audio presets and the microphone volume and sidetone levels. You can enable 7.1 virtual surround sound via DTS Headphone:X v2.0 and select from among three surround sound profiles: Game, Studio, and Cinema. You can also set the headset to connect via Bluetooth when it’s powered on and set the headset to turn itself off after sitting idle for a period of time to save battery power. The headset is rated for 20 hours of continuous use.
SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless – Performance
To test the Arctis 9 Wireless, I played Call of Duty: WWII, CS:GO, and Fortnite on the PC and listened to music on the Spotify iOS app. The first thing I noticed was how big the sound field felt. With 7.1 sound enabled, I could not only hear from which direction teammates and enemies were approaching but also how far away there were. Sound effects gained in volume and detail as gun battles grew closer. Game audio was dynamic and well balanced, with powerful bass, strong mids and clear high tones. Large explosions felt concussive and dialogue between characters sounded crisp and clear.
The big bass response helped games sound and feel realistic and also aided music playback. From the booming bass from DMX’s anthem, X Goin’ Give It To Ya to the clean picking on Billy String’s Taking Water, the Arctis 9 Wireless handles everything from rap to bluegrass with ease. Despite the strong bass response, I wouldn’t call the Arctis 9 Wireless bass heavy like so many other gaming headsets because it does an admirable job of separating the lows from the mids and the mids from the highs.
To test the microphone, I made a voice recording. The recording sounded accurate and clear but failed to separate my voice from ambient noise as effectively as the Blue mic of the Logitech G Pro X.
Microsoft is significantly extending the warranty for the Xbox Elite Controller Series 2, in light of some users encountering hardware issues. Microsoft says it’s only a “small percentage” of users encountering issues, but has extended the warranty to a full year from the previous 90 days.
According to the Xbox Support site, the warranty extension applies to all Elite 2 controllers shipped since it launched in November 2019. Also, any repairs made outside the previous warranty window will be refunded by October 31, 2020.
The support page doesn’t specify what issues prompted the move, other than to say that some have been experiencing “mechanical issues.” This follows some mechanical issues with the first Elite controller. Microsoft told Windows Central upon launch that it was aware some users were experiencing issues and were “actively investigating with our engineering teams.” This also comes amid a class-action lawsuit regarding drifting joysticks, with an amended complaint filed on October 2.
Xbox One controllers are forward-compatible with the upcoming Xbox Series X and Series S, so your standard or Elite controller can migrate with you to the new generation. This is a distinction from Sony’s approach, as it’s introducing the new DualSense controller and PS5 games will not work with the old DualShock 4 controllers. DualShock 4 will, however, work with backwards-compatible games running on PS5.
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NPD Group has revealed the US sales results for September 2020, which saw another month of growth for the gaming industry. Consumer spending across video game hardware, content, and accessories saw a 10% increase when compared to a year ago, with sales reaching $4.3 billion. Mobile spending, hardware, and accessories also saw growth within the time period.
The top-selling game of the month was Marvel’s Avengers from publisher Square Enix and developer Crystal Dynamics. Launch month dollar sales of Marvel’s Avengers were the second-highest for any superhero game in US history, right behind Marvel’s Spider-Man.
Marvel’s Avengers is so far the seventh-best-selling game of 2020, although it has experienced a significant drop-off in audience numbers since launch, which Square Enix is confident can be reversed with new patches and DLC.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 was September’s fourth-best-selling game and went on to surpass the launch month dollar sales of any title in the history of the Tony Hawk’s franchise, a record which had been held since 2004 by Tony Hawk’s Underground 2.
Absent from the list is Take-Two Interactive’s Mafia: Definitive Edition, which didn’t have sale results listed by the NPD. The inclusion of digital sales data in the best-selling title charts is done at the discretion of the participating publisher according to the NPD, which Take-Two Interactive did not provide.
“We can confirm that Take-Two, like some of our industry peers, does not provide digital sales data to NPD for inclusion in their published industry reports,” Take-Two said in a press statement. “At our discretion, we periodically share our internal sales data with outside research firms for inclusion in their media reports. That said, we do intend to provide an update on our titles’ performance when we report our Q2 FY21 results on November 5th.”
Take-Two Interactive’s NBA 2K21 debuted in fifth place, a steep drop from last year when NBA 2K20 claimed the top spot on the charts. Other than a handful of occasions when Marvel’s Spider-Man and Destiny 2 dethroned the annual basketball game in 2018 and 2017 respectively, the NBA series usually grabs the number one spot in the September top ten every year.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2
Also making a successful debut was Paradox Interactive’s Crusader Kings 3, which earned the seventh spot in the top ten. After just a month of sales, the latest entry in that franchise is the best-selling release in the series and it also experienced the highest launch month dollar sales of any title published by Paradox Interactive.
You can see the full list below.
September 2020 NPD Software Sales
Marvel’s Avengers
Super Mario 3D All-Stars
Madden NFL 21
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2
NBA 2K21
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Crusader Kings III
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Star Wars: Squadrons
Mario Kart 8: Deluxe
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time
Ghost of Tsushima
Ring Fit Adventure
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
UFC 4
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Super Mario Odyssey
Mortal Kombat 11
Super Mario Party
Best Selling Games Year-to-Date
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The Last of Us: Part II
Madden NFL 21
Ghost of Tsushima
Final Fantasy VII: Remake
Marvel’s Avengers
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
MLB: The Show 20
Super Mario 3D All-Stars
Video game hardware and accessories also saw huge gains, with video game hardware in particular accounting for $277 million in sales. Compared to a year ago, that’s an increase of 15%. The Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console of the month and year-to-date spending on hardware has increased 22% when compared to a year ago, to $2.3 billion.
The Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller was the best-selling accessory of September, while gamepads and headset spending all reached new US sales records and led to the market recording $191 million in spending on these products, a 30% increase when compared to a year ago.
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Cardy quizzes both Dale and Jesse about their recent experiences in the haunted houses of Phasmophobia and Bly Manor. There’s also the new PS5 UI to talk about as the next-generation of consoles fast approach.
There’s a tightly contested new Endless Search to play as well as some of your feedback of which only some are sandwich-based.
Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].
As a follow-up to 2018’s enjoyable stealth-based survival horror game Remothered: Tormented Fathers, Remothered: Broken Porcelain is both a sequel and a prequel – but that’s really just a polite way of saying I couldn’t make heads or tails of the chronology of its plot, and I’m not convinced its creators could either. Perhaps I was too distracted by its countless audio dropouts, freezes, broken controller inputs and baffling enemy behaviours to really be able to concentrate on straightening out the tangled threads of its nonlinear narrative. If nothing else, Remothered: Broken Porcelain is aptly named; like a shattered vase it lacks structure, each individual part is rough around the edges, and it’s not really worth the effort to try and piece them all together.
At the very least the setting is an appropriately haunting one. Ashmann Inn is an antiquated hotel situated in a secluded snowy mountain region highly reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Shining. Certainly during its opening moments I enjoyed the eerie ambience of its dimly lit hallways as I, controlling the young protagonist Jennifer, indulged in a deadly game of hide and seek with the murderous, mind-controlled hotel maid Andrea (seemingly modelled on Annie from Stephen King’s Misery).
But that enjoyment was about as short-lived as Stephen King’s career as a film director, because Remothered: Broken Porcelain simply can’t sustain the same level of cat and mouse tension that the original game could. This is largely due to Jennifer’s movement speed which is positively glacial in comparison to the swift gait of each enemy stalker. By the time you’ve slowly crouch-walked your way up behind one, they’ve already read a book, made a sandwich, and turned around and spotted you before the stealth attack prompt has managed to materialise over their head.
Since attacking enemies from behind is your sole combat option for the most part, once detected your only course of action is to flee and hide until they’re no longer on high alert. This can also be problematic, as seen by the many times I went to hop into a locker and the ‘open locker’ button prompt failed to appear, resulting in me frantically shuffling back and forth trying to find it before copping the wrong end of a pair of sewing scissors in the jugular. The supernatural sensitivity of the enemy AI versus your own sluggishness and unreliable inputs doesn’t make for a fun stealth experience, just a frustrating one that made each area of Remothered: Broken Porcelain a chore to complete.
A Bug’s Life
Outside of these cumbersome enemy encounters, there’s surprisingly little else to do in Remothered: Broken Porcelain. There are significantly fewer environmental puzzles to solve than there were in Tormented Fathers, with only the occasional cracking of a safe combination to demand much in the way of lateral thought. Instead, Remothered: Broken Porcelain places an emphasis on Jennifer’s ability to temporarily teleport her consciousness into a moth and fly up to out of reach items or, in one instance, agitate a guard dog enough for Jennifer to slip by. It’s an interesting concept, but there’s no real scope for employing it outside of very specific story junctures, and when you do get to use it it’s like trying to pilot a remote-controlled drone through a room submerged in honey. The moth’s movements are seriously listless and it has a tendency to get stuck on parts of the environment. And since it can only be used in short bursts I’d often find myself switching to moth form, getting stuck in a wall on the way to my target, being beamed back to Jennifer, and then forced to wait for a cooldown timer to recharge before I could start the process over again.
Jennifer’s moth ability might not be much fun to use, but at least it’s one bug that’s actually been included on purpose. Elsewhere there are far too many game-breaking glitches to count. Aside from the aforementioned button prompts failing to appear when you’re trying to hide, there’s dialogue and ambient audio cutting in and out, characters getting stuck in scenery, game crashes, enemy stalkers pinning you between their body and the environment, confusing camera quirks, and more. It took me about 10 hours to complete my playthrough of Remothered: Broken Porcelain, but I’d estimate that at least a couple of those hours were a direct result of failing objectives due to glitches and retreading stretches after forced restarts. To developer Stormind Games’ credit, there has already been an effort to rectify many of these flaws – at the time of writing (some 48 hours after launch) there have already been three patches deployed for Remothered: Broken Porcelain’s PC version.
However, while fixing technical issues is of course appreciated, it’s going to take nothing less than a significant overhaul to smooth out Remothered: Broken Porcelain’s garbled story. The plot jarringly shunts forwards and backwards in time while being only loosely connected by cutscenes that end far too abruptly. The only shining light as far as the story is concerned are the handful of playable flashbacks that centre around Jennifer and her best friend Linn. They’re easily the most well-written exchanges in the entire ordeal and are set prior to the madness descending on the residents of Ashmann Inn, meaning they’re mercifully devoid of any sloppy combat sections.
EA normally releases new NHL games during the Stanley Cup playoffs when the sporting world is focused on hockey, but complications due to COVID-19 led to a delay for NHL 21. The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup weeks ago, and as a result, ice hockey has escaped the wider public sports consciousness as other leagues take hold. But NHL 21 is a compelling reason to care about hockey again, as this year’s game delivers a major improvement to the story mode, adds a flashy new arcade-style mode in HUT Rush, and makes the on-the-ice gameplay better than ever thanks to a series of new skill moves that let you play with more style.
Be A Pro 2.0
The biggest new addition for NHL 21 is the expanded and improved Be A Pro. After NHL 20 delivered basically no updates on the career-focused mode, NHL 21 offers a huge step forward thanks to a cinematic-style campaign of sorts, where you create a character and guide them through their career, beginning in either Europe or the Canadian Hockey League and competing for a spot in the NHL. The story beats play out through non-voiced dialogue sequences and cutscenes with coaches, media, and teammates. The main choices you make come from the Team or Star paths, and both have pros and cons to consider as you weigh your options to shape your career in the way you want to.
As an example, my agent called me to ask if I wanted to attend a charity event for a wildlife protection company. I chose the “Team” response, and my brand rating improved because the simulation suggested my fans would see this as a sports star being humble and genuine. However, choosing this option came with a negative effect, too, as my agent told me it was a noble choice but I should also plan for my life after hockey and try to make as much money in my prime as possible. I enjoyed the struggle of making these choices, and I found myself choosing one option and then loading a previous save to see how things would have played out differently. The choices you have to make can be real head-scratchers and they generally seem believable and taken from real-world headlines. But while the conversation system and cutscenes are generally enjoyable and a step up from the past iterations of Be A Pro, they are at times very cheesy and contrived, so the conversations and their impact don’t always resonate.
I started my Be A Pro season in the Canadian Hockey League’s Memorial Cup, and it was an enjoyable challenge to start my career as a low-level, poorly rated player who had to compete well with what few shifts I was given to win over my coach and teammates. Very few hockey players have a meteoric rise; it’s often a slow grind, and this is faithfully represented in NHL 21’s Be A Pro. The aim is to make it to the NHL by performing well enough to get signed by a team in the draft. To that end, NHL 21’s Be A Pro mode delivers a multitude of feedback systems to help you improve. During games, a coaching system gives you live feedback about how you’re performing and what you need to do better. After each game, a detailed statistics page populates with even more information and shows you sliders that represent how much further you need to go to improve.
You can tailor your player to your liking with NHL 21’s skill tree system, allowing you to decide what type of player you want to be and then building a skill profile that focuses on anything you want. As I got better and better, I enjoyed seeing my player grow and evolve with their OVR rating rising, and the intuitive feedback systems helped me to understand what to prioritize to become a better player and teammate.
The rest of what makes Be A Pro so great this year are the more subtle improvements and attention to detail. There is a new radio show featuring NHL 21 commentator James Cybulski, who is a radio host in real life. It plays while you’re moving through the menus and completing tasks like assigning skill points, checking the calendar, and tracking your progress, and it’s exciting to hear Cybulski speak about what happened during the previous week and shower you with praise or discuss your less-than-ideal performance with his witty and informative commentary. It’s a natural-sounding broadcast show, complete with Cybulski taking callers and flubbing his dialogue in some cases just as it would happen in real life.
There is also a new Salary Perks option that lets you decide what to do with your earnings, which can become significant as you progress through your NHL career. Some of the options include supporting charities, buying cars and houses, or even investing your money into app development, and they impact your player’s ratings, which further encourages you to invest in your player’s life off the ice. For example, buying a sports car gets you a limited-time buff toward speed on the ice, while hiring a lawyer gets you +2 aggressiveness, which is pretty silly but fun to see at the same time.
NHL 21’s Be A Pro mode is a far cry from the Longshot and The Journey modes from EA’s Madden and FIFA games, respectively–which are far more fleshed out and include voiced dialogue–but what is there for NHL 21’s Be A Pro mode is entertaining and feels like a first step, and one that I hope EA builds upon in the future.
Dangle Game Upgrades
On the ice, NHL 21 excels yet again. The big new additions to the gameplay mix this year are a series of skill moves that make NHL 21 even more true-to-life and faithful to where the real NHL is at these days. Players like Alexander Spechnikov, Sidney Crosby, and Alexander Ovechkin are wowing fans with their skills, and this has seemingly inspired the flashy new skill moves in NHL 21. The new slip and chip dekes are relatively simple to execute, and they are useful for getting around defenders in the open ice. The bank net self-pass, which Crosby made famous, is particularly helpful to quickly change directions and keep defenders guessing. The more challenging dekes, the “no-move move” and the lacrosse goal, are aimed at the highest-skilled players and I found them to be extremely difficult to pull off. The lacrosse goal in particular is the hardest deke in the game–and it should be, given that it’s only been performed in real life on camera a handful of times.
The new skill moves are a welcome and enjoyable part of NHL 21, but they are not overpowered, and you don’t necessarily need to use them to score goals. Like in real hockey, the majority of goals that are scored are the result of playing with speed, making hard passes, and putting in the effort to fight for the puck. It’s a thrill to pull off some of the new skill moves during a game, especially against human opponents, but I scored the most goals–and had the most goals scored against me–by breaking the defense down with speed and making good and smart passes. Like in previous years, cycling the puck and waiting for a cross-crease scoring opportunity is the best way to win, even if it’s not the flashiest way to do so.
Also of note, your AI teammates, along with defenders, are smarter and more capable this year. In comparison to NHL 20, I found the AI to make better choices and skate together at a more capable level, and this contributes to making NHL 21 feel even more authentic to the sport.
AI goalies are smarter in NHL 21, too–they get into position and reading shots better than last year, and as a result I found myself scoring fewer “cheap” goals, which helps make the game feel more true-to-life. The sloppy goals from previous games can still happen, but I experienced fewer of them in NHL 21. Several new desperation animations for goalies have been added this year, too, and they elicit some jaw-dropping sequences just as they do on a TV broadcast.
There is still some weirdness to be found in NHL 21’s gameplay. Player models do not always react to the action on the ice in a natural-looking way–there can be horror-show clips of players knocking into each other and limbs bending in inhuman ways, for example. And it’s disappointing that the player models and the crowd animations are largely unchanged from last year. But these shortcomings are few and far between, and they don’t negatively affect the experience in a consequential way.
Excellent Controls And Detail
The controls in NHL 21 are once again phenomenal. Using the recommended skill stick controls, the gamepad feels like an extension of your stick, and the controls feel intuitive and simple to grasp across the wide variety of moves you can perform. In particular, I found that poke checks are remarkably represented in NHL 21, providing a fine level of control to break up passes and give your opponents headaches as they try to enter the zone or make a move.
Elsewhere, NHL 21 delivers subtle improvements to the presentation that help the game look and perform more realistically. Jerseys generally look more like the real deal, featuring crinkles on them that give the appearance that they are actually worn instead of just slapped onto the character model. The animations, too, appear smoother this year, especially the backskating and pivoting animations that are fluid almost to a level of a TV broadcast. Some of the skating animations are still a bit wonky, but for the most part NHL 21 has a stunning package of realistic-looking animations that ice hockey fans will appreciate.
The attention to detail in NHL 21 is impeccable and makes the game feel like a true representation of hockey culture. PA announcers during intermissions talk about hot dog giveaways, commentators James Cybulski and Ray Ferraro have an excellent rapport and effectively balance being informative and entertaining at the same time. The way a player looks over their shoulder when entering the circle for a faceoff, how the crowd noise crescendos into a roar during the third period when the game is close, and how the ice creaks and cracks when playing on ponds are just a few examples of how NHL 21 successfully captures the spirit of hockey by getting the small details right.
HUT Rush
In addition to the updated Be A Pro, the other biggest new addition for NHL 21 is the HUT Rush mode, which is a great addition to the Hockey Ultimate Team mix. A less serious, more arcade-style mode, HUT Rush challenges you to rack up the highest score by completing skill moves and chaining them together for multiplier points. HUT Rush makes you play differently–no longer are you trying to score goals the basic way, because that won’t be good enough.
In HUT Rush, it’s all about playing with style and using the new skill moves to do so. HUT Rush ties into the new skill moves nicely, providing an avenue for which to put the new skills to good use. There is a social competition element to HUT Rush as well, as your high scores go on a leaderboard that resets weekly, and I found myself coming back just in the first week to see how my stats compared to the global playerbase.
Hockey Culture
There are a multitude of modes to play in NHL 21 depending on what kind of experience you want, and I enjoyed the variety. Beyond the traditional 5v5 mode and the aforementioned HUT Rush and Be A Pro, the Threes and Ones modes return, and they remain as engaging and fun as ever with their less serious, more stripped-down mechanics. World of Chel returns as well, and this online mode succeeds in creating a hub of sorts for you to create a character and develop them. In World of Chel, you compete against other human players with leaderboards, a battle pass-style cosmetic system, and other progression rewards that represent the carrot to keep chasing. Hockey Ultimate Team offers literally hundreds of challenges to take part in, and this is before you even begin competing with other humans in online versus modes.
The Franchise mode, however, sees only minimal updates–the main new feature, a trade deadline simulation, doesn’t end up feeling very satisfyingly tense and demanding as you race to make trades against the clock. That said, Franchise remains a very strong offering that lets you live out the fantasy of being an NHL GM as you make all manner of choices to help your team succeed, from identifying draft picks, to maintaining and repairing the toilets in your stadium’s bathrooms, to keeping your fans happy. You need to manage just about everything, and it can be a real head-scratcher to have to make decisions that might be good for your organization but bad for player morale. In that way, it feels realistic and true to the experience of the dilemmas that a real NHL GM might face.
Simply put, NHL 21 represents a gigantic offering with each distinct part bringing something to the table that shows off a different corner of the hockey world and its culture. And speaking of culture, NHL 21 introduces new banners that pop up to tell you that offensive team names and other toxic behavior will not be tolerated. Further, NHL 21 has built-in player-reporting tools, so you can quickly and easily report offensive user-created team names you may come across. The NHL video game series and the sport it’s based on is known to have a diversity and toxicity problem, and it’s good to see EA take a step in the right direction to weed out some of the bad actors. However, with the game’s online modes only just getting properly populated now, it’s too soon to say if these reporting tools will be effective in thwarting bad behavior.
NHL 21 is a fantastic ice hockey game that pushes the series forward with an enjoyable, engaging story mode in Be A Pro and a flashy, arcade-style way to play with HUT Rush. The new skill moves are a welcome addition to the mix to give players new ways to be slippery and keep defenders guessing, but the best part of NHL 21 is its solid foundation thanks to its excellent controls and presentation package that is getting even closer to mirroring a TV broadcast.
