We’re still waiting on EA to confirm the existence of NHL 19 and announce a release date, but we can predict based on NHL 18’s September 15th release date last year that NHL 19 will also be available in September. We should learn a lot more about the game during EA Play, but that’s not till next month. In the meantime, here is our wishlist for features we’d love to see in NHL 19!
5. Do something about puck pickups.
If you were actually in the NHL, you’d have no problem spotting the puck in the middle of the action. But in the game, it is so easy to miss it when it is right near your position. It’s ridiculously frustrating, because there are lots of situations where you should have the upper hand and you lose it. We need a decent puck pickup system to deal with this.
4. Improve animations.
One of the appeals of actually watching hockey is to enjoy the agility and finesse with which the athletes play. Such is not the case with the NHL game series. The movements of the players on-screen are anything but agile. They’re cumbersome, and this needs to change.
3. Make AI players more helpful.
It’s so annoying when you’re in the middle of a scrum and you need help, and none of the AI players on your team are lifting a finger to assist you. And then when you need a clear path, suddenly they’re crowding in on you. It’d be great if in NHL 19, AI players actually go where they’re needed more often.
2. Make players look more realistic and individualized.
A lot of the virtual players in NHL 18 still didn’t look like the real athletes they were supposed to represent. They just looked sort of “generic.” You would think this wouldn’t be the case with star players, but even they just blended in with the rest of their team-mates. Let’s hope this changes in NHL 19.
1. Get some fresh commentary.
It’s not that we don’t enjoy listening to the same lines of commentary over and over … but really, just a tad more variety wouldn’t be a bad thing. It gets old hearing the same things again and again, and it isn’t realistic either. There’s very little context around the commentary; it is all just focused on what is happening right now without tying into other events.
So that is our wishlist for NHL 19! Maybe at EA Play, some of these improvements and changes will be discussed or confirmed. Be sure to keep checking our NHL updates, especially during EA Play!