Play your way to superstardom in the revamped Be a Pro mode and experience the authentic action and energy of real life hockey with the Full Contact Physics Engine.
GenreHockey
Platforms xbox360
DEVELOPER EA Sports | PUBLISHER Codemasters | RELEASE DATE
NHL 12 Reviews xbox360
videogametalk.com review
Fans of the NHL series are unlikely to skip an entry, for any number of reasons, including the roster and uniform updates, the online play or the simple lack of competition, and there’s no reason to start now, as this version’s tweaks offer a genuine improvement over last year’s well-regarded title, once you adjust to the more realistic controls (either through practice or tuner adjustments.) Hell, just the addition of the Winter Classic alone might make it worth the purchase price, and you can consider the overblown legends a little bonus thrown in with the multitude of modes and options available to you.
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gamernode.com review
Sitting back and taking a look at the season that is NHL 12, I believe that players will find themselves with the most complete, authentic, and flat-out enjoyable hockey game in long time. The sheer depth and variety of modes can keep you coming back whether it’s for a game, season, or entire career. HUT is just as addicting as the year before, and though the introduction of the legends did seem to fall a bit short, it was still a solid inclusion to the franchise. Wrap it up with a new collision system that delivers the sense of what it’s like to be in the trenches during a hockey contest, and you’ve got yourself a game that no fan of the sport should be without.
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gaming-age.com review
If all that wasn’t enough, you can now play another new mode called Be a Legend, which allows you to play as a former NHL Legend player to see how he stacks up against the best of today’s crop of NHL superstars. Most of the legends are locked and require certain other mode game objectives to open them up, but once you do that you have the access to big times players like Jeremy Roenick, Patrick Roy, Steve Yzerman, Gordie Howe, and of course the great one Wayne Gretsky. This is a love letter to hardcore fans of the NHL and we thank you for it EA.
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gamechronicles.com review
Overall, the amount of different play modes both online and offline are staggering. There is something for just about everyone and when you get tired of one mode there is something different to explore. The inclusion of the Ultimate Team trading cards from Upper Deck is brilliant. We can only hope they increase the customization and expandability next year with a decent team builder application. NHL 12 improves on several areas that make this game even better than last year. But unfortunately EA left areas like team creation untouched. I expect quite a few Sports Game of the Year awards to be heading from NHL’s shelf to FIFA’s shelf this year. Luckily, they’ll just have to walk down the hallway to deliver them.
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xboxaddict.com review
Let me pick the soundtrack next year. Please. It would also be great (in an ideal, less payment for licensing world) if you could get all the goal horn songs from all the NHL clubs. It would be awesome to hear Holiday blare when the Canucks score at home, or Chelsea Dagger when the Blackhawks score, for example. It would also be nice to get an "ice level analyst" type of personality like Ferraro or McGuire out there. Someone who can throw out things like coaches speaking to players, or in-game injury reports like they do on real broadcasts. I’m just grasping at straws here since there’s not much I can suggest gameplay wise at this point. Oh right — PLEASE look into fixing the profile loading time issues pre-game. If I didn’t have to keep waiting minutes at a time when I loaded my EA Sports games up, that would make me the happiest game reviewer on the planet.
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cheatcc.com review
Right out of the first face-off, EA’s quest for realism is readily apparent; the game speed in NHL 12 is significantly slower than its predecessors. This is the type of thing that typically worries me about a developer’s pursuit of realism. Even if EA is trying to match pro hockey’s actual speed, the end result is going to be less accurate than a faster-paced caricature of reality, because that caricature captures the essence of hockey’s frenetic play more accurately than any realistic approach ever could. However, EA makes up for the slower game speed with their artificial intelligence improvements
game-over.com review
NHL 12 is, in my opinion, the best hockey game to date. It looks vivid and sharp, but the true-to-form NHL gameplay is what pushes it over the top. With a fast-paced game like hockey, it’s not easy to recreate the experience in a video game, but with this title, EA has managed to do so quite successfully, making this one easy to recommend without thinking twice.
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gametrailers.com review
No Synopsis Available
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gamingexcellence.com review
To be honest, I’m usually in the camp that skips every second NHL title because it’s hard to justify what seems like a few enhancements and a roster update for the price of a AAA game, but this time they’ve done a fantastic job with improvements that are very hard to resist. Damn fine way to celebrate your 20th title.
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1up.com review
This is the best version of NHL in the past three years — it’s like the previous versions were simply leading up to this release. Everything looks and feels and plays as it should; a fine balance of entertainment and realism. It’s a fantastic entry for any fan of the game and it comes highly recommended from this author.
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gameshark.com review
EA is touting a new “anticipation†AI, which helps defenders play the lanes better and the new “battling in front of the net†feature which is also clearly in play – but the key is that the AI plays better positional hockey than before and that alone is a big deal. (Although I’d like to see the AI occasionally ice the puck or go offsides and you will need to adjust the penalty settings to get more play stoppages).
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gamerevolution.com review
Though being a bit confusing with all the menu options and hundreds of game modes, NHL 12 is overall just a downright fun-ass game to play. Even if you don’t know much about the players or teams, this is a game you might want to check out simply for the in-rink fisticuffs. Maybe your little sister can play too; with the ability for players to lose their hockey stick, she can just skate around and pretend it’s the Ice Capades.
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mondoxbox.com review
No Synopsis Available
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darkstation.com review
There is no doubt that the gameplay got a huge push forward in 2011 with an increased amount of animation and an increased focus on the action on the ice. I usually try to shy away from talking about tweaks to a games engine but there is a noticeable improvement on the action on screen. First off hits against the glass seem to have more of an impact while slight checks will only give a glancing shot. Much of these improvements are slight but if you played a lot of NHL 11 you will immediately pick up on the differences.
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planetxbox360.com review
NHL 12 doesn’t reinvent the hockey genre this year but it really doesn’t need to. EA SPORTS have set the standard of what all future Hockey SIM games will have to live up to. NHL 12 just adds in the “Icing on the Cake†with the fine tuning put into this year’s game. Whether it’s the new Presentation or additions to “Be a Proâ€, NHL 12 is a phenomenal sports game.
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gameinformer.com review
Though the Be A GM mode needs a major overhaul and the new Legends feature falls flat, NHL 12 is still strongest where it counts – on the ice. Just like a well-rounded power forward who can dominate in all three zones, you can’t deny the benefit this brings to the club.
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worthplaying.com review
NHL 12 is a very good hockey simulation offering a full year of up-to-date sports gaming. Certainly, there’s nothing here to put anyone off the series. Lamentably, there’s not anything to convert pro hockey simulation abstainers to the fold, either. The game is incrementally better than last year’s game, but this year, like no other since EA remade NHL into a top-tier sports franchise, I’m starting to sense a pall of ennui descending over the experience. Soon I’d like to see EA Canada take some bold steps, courageously facing the risks involved. Go ahead, break the game and tear it apart. It’s only one year. You can always roll it back in the next revision to the stable, if staid, game we have today.
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ign.com review
NHL 12 is a huge game completely jam-packed with modes and gameplay features. Naming them all and going through everything would take this review into New Yorker Magazine word-count. And that’s a good sign, especially for fans of the series and of hockey in general. If you purchase EA’s NHL offering yearly, keep on keeping on. And if you’re like me, a fan of the sport who has strayed away from the series in recent years, NHL 12 gives you plenty of reasons to get back into the game. NHL 12 has its problems, to be certain, but most of what it does it does so well that the series persists as a fan-favorite nearly 20 years after its introduction.
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oxmonline.com review
NHL 12 is an improvement over last year’s game, but hardly a revolutionary title. It’s the best hockey game on Xbox 360 – though, of course, it’s also the only hockey game on 360.
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gamesradar.com review
It would have taken the world’s lousiest miracle to make NHL 12 a bad game. After all, the core gameplay is so solid that their NHL 2K competition said “no mas†and got out of the business. Our only complaint is that EA should have let the Legends simmer for a season or two until a compelling, “holy crap this is awesome†way to integrate the greatest players in history could have been dreamed up. To be frank, the Legends detract from the game more than anything else. We’re much happier now that we’ve bagged our pursuit up that ladder; we’re more content gunning for a Stanley Cup.
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