From the moment you hit the ice in NHL 16, everything feels slick. New animations have improved the fluidity of the game’s skating mechanics, and gliding across virtual ice has never felt so natural. The new Seamless Puck Pickups feature means that players are more effective at controlling loose pucks, ensuring that the action remains fast and furious. Scoring goals requires skill and tactical awareness, and cycling the puck, breaking down defenses, and capitalizing on a goalie’s most vulnerable moments all result in prolific opportunities. Particular attention has been paid to cross-crease passes that are harder to pull off in the face of defensive opposition, as pucks rarely go through sticks or skates like they so often did last year. NHL 16’s gameplay is without a doubt, the best the series has ever seen. 

 

The idea of a HUT single-player mode is a good one, and something fans have wanted for a while, but its implementation could have been so much better. Taking on a similar structure to the online version of the mode, single-player HUT has you play through divisions as you try to create a powerhouse fantasy team. By winning, you’ll move up until you reach the top. The problem is that only the Rookie difficulty setting is available at the start of the mode, since you need certain card requirements to unlock higher levels. Sure, you could just buy new packs with real world currency, trying to get the cards you need, grind away online, or save up the daily puck rewards for playing on consecutive days. But if you want to get right into the mode, Rookie difficulty is just not fun at all for a veteran player of the series-so those unlock requirements were very frustrating to find.

 

NHL 16 offers an abundance of game modes, but the first order of business is to head out on to the ice for a regular match. I picked my favorite team-the Chicago Blackhawks-and competed in a back-and-forth match with the Tampa Bay Lightning in a recreation of this year's Stanley Cup finals. I quickly learned that I'm terrible at defense, but the game encourages player growth. Throughout the match there are on-screen cues with suggestions for specific plays or decisions. The game will tell players to pass to a forward or body check an opponent based on the situation, and it instills fundamental techniques for newcomers. Of course all of that can be turned off, but it's a welcome tool for those who want to improve in NHL 16.

 

Sometimes going into those online modes sheds a horrible light on the fact that there are a lot of people way better at this game than myself. If you feel the same way, then EA has come to rescue us by adding the very helpful Visual On-Ice experience. Visual On-Ice is a little popup above your currently controlled character that provides on-the-fly visual feedback for each hit, predicted passing lane, puck call performance, defensive positioning, and on-goal targeting. Simply adding a red descriptive indicator for bad actions and green indicator for good actions really helped me take notice as to which decisions that I had been making were good, great, bad, or weak. Sure it doesn't necessarily help you master the controls right away, but I quickly started to learn what moves I could execute better than others and what I needed to improve on. What especially helped me was the goal targeting. When winding up for a slap shot a target appeared on the net to show where I was aiming and if it was an open shot or not.

 

As for the more minute changes, coaching feedback has returned. After each period (or in the pause menu), you will get tips from the coach saying what you are doing well and what you need to tighten up. Also added is a new precision skating system. For the most part, all of the movement feels the same as it did last year. The only clear difference with this new skating is it is much easier to intercept passes and hop in the way of opposing players. It makes your player slightly more agile, which is noticeable as you try to disrupt a power play.

 

If you don't care for the Be a GM or Be a Pro modes, chances are you're instead invested in Ultimate Team. This was one of few main modes that actually made it into NHL 15, and it's more or less the same as before. Offline seasons have been included, as well as new animations for opening packs, but the core is otherwise the same. It's still great, but it's not really improved in any meaningful way apart from the gameplay.