Review by: William Abner

NHL 11 is the best game EA Sports has ever made. The gameplay is certifiably brilliant – the best I have ever seen in any EA Sports game – ever. My experience goes back to the founding of the company, so I have a lot of games to test this theory against. Through the years EA has released its share of good and bad sports games, but for my money no game from its library can top NHL 11. On the ice, it’s that good. It is not, however, the best game the company can make. There’s still room for improvement; it all depends on your perspective.

When the NHL franchise rebooted a few years ago with the new right-stick/.trigger shooting and passing mechanic, basically kick starting what was in many ways a stagnant, dying series, it opened up the game a great deal and allowed users more freedom than they had ever experienced in a hockey game. The problem was that EA really hadn’t built a great game around that mechanic. Until now.

What I find most interesting about this game is that it doesn’t have a back of the box meal ticket. There is a lot that’s technically “new” in NHL 11: the new faceoff mechanic is neat and adds another layer of realism, players now break their stick (far too often in fact), the new quick deke system is devastating if used properly, boardplay is remarkably improved, and so on. But there’s nothing that is terribly eye-catching for casual players from a gameplay perspective. What drives this version is the physics – the new engine changes everything.

I have logged a few dozen games at this point and I literally see new stuff every single time I play. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s stunning. It may be as mundane as the way the puck ricochets off the post – or something as thrilling as watching your center get tripped from behind, fall to his knees and deke the goalie for a goal as he slides past the net. Last night I saw a goal disallowed as a player raised his stick to knock in a goal. I have seen goals go in accidently off a skate; goals where the goalie didn’t see the puck and he accidently knocked it in; I have seen player collisions that look amazingly realistic, and I see new ones all the time. Nothing appears canned.

What this all means is that NHL 11 passes the predictability test. It’s the most important test for any sports game—it’s what gives a game its staying power. NHL 11 is one of the most unpredictable sports games ever made, right on par with champions of the genre such as MLB The Show. This game stands right alongside Sony’s baseball opus.