Fleury14 wrote:Finally, it's possible to pass it back to the blue line and not have to worry about the D-man going offsides because you turned the wrong way. That was very irritating in last years game, seems gone now.
I'm not sure it's gone completely, it happened to me last night. First I was excited that the D-man was up and in the zone, and that he was facing the goal and collected the puck well (it was a power play too, btw), and in trying to bring him deeper into the zone along the boards, for whatever reason he did the classic SEGA loop-de-loo (sort of like the James Brown 'Ow!' move the kick returners do sometimes in the NFL game), and viola, he 360ºs and sweeps the puck out and back in for the offsides. GRRRRRRRRRR. It might not happen as often as it used to, but it still happens, folks.
I REALLY disllike that one cannot skate backwards with the puck. I have to admit, that's one thing I just fail to understand; why is that impossible? Am I missing something here, some bizarre rule I'm not aware of? I don't think so.
Otherwise, I've been enjoying the game, and I think I will learn to like it more and more. But at this point I still miss Rivals. Now hang on, I'm a head-to-head guy here, so don't get all crazy on me withe Rivals stuff. I miss the R-stick passsing because it was so QUICK- you could actually sort of hack at the puck with that move, so it was much more like real hockey. That is, you didn't really need to establish 'posession' in order to knock the puck one way or another; hugely helpful when working the boards.
Dump-ins are better now, and i can clear the puck OK when shorthanded with the shoot button. But I still get very frustrated that the y-button dump move takes so long for the animation, and then even if you L-trigger to slap-shoot it around the boards, that dump can be blocked with the greatest of ease; I've had guys basically pick it off the blade of my stick, and start sakting the other way with perfect stick-handling control of the biscuit. Since the animation takes so long if you want to get some umph behind it, it gives the D guy plenty of time to come in and take it away. Frustrating. I miss how in Rivals you could just shove that R-stick forward to slide the puck into the zone lickety-split, instant action on the pushing of the stick, no long animnation to let the D get in position. I do think that there are more dump-in options now, so I thnk I will get the hang of it over time.
Goal variety has been pretty darn good, I think. I've hit a slapper top-shelf, whpped a wrister from the hash-marks in the slot, etc. etc., I've seen a few different types of goals. However, the rebound seems to me to have been made into a major scoring method, something I don't remember too much from older Sega hockey games. Now, I guess this is a good thing, really, the more I think about it. But i have to say sometimes I feel a little bit like the uber-goalies have been 'fixed' mostly due to increased # of rebounds. I know this isn't 100% true, but sometimes it feels that way. Still, I do think the collision detection on the goalies is much improved, that is, the vaccuun effect is gone. Vaccuuming stil happens plenty for the skaters, though, as that puck looks like it's made of Iron, and the blades powerful magnets. I guess you got to do something.
I'm glad Sega picked up on Rivals's penalty time method. I set it to one minute, no matter how long the periods (I guess I would do 2 if I were playing 10 min. periods or something). It's tough to find where to set it, though, and I can't figure out how to do it for online exhibition play. One cool thing is you can set a lot of these options for onine leagues/tourneys. That's pretty cool.
My biggest frustration is getting in games online with guys I know

. I just so tire of playing the CPU. I should play random people more. Oh, and the Caps are so bad it makes me sick, but that's not Sega's fault.
