NHL 27: A Shocking Backslide That Could Change the Game Forever

Even the best new element to the game is sloppy in its execution. It’s nice to have attention paid to goal celebrations, but when the camera cuts to the same, generic, blocky fans who still look like they’re out of the PS2 era, that’s when things pull you right back out of the experience.

This new presentation is also slapdash. Some teams will feel somewhat true to life, but others have been largely ignored. In short: Unless you’re a fan of a team that skates out through an inflatable, it’s going to be a little disappointing. As a fan of the Carolina Hurricanes, it’s easiest to describe that experience, and as nice as it may be to have Petey Pablo’s Raise Up every time the Canes score a goal, EA Sports didn’t bother to get the far more important team tradition of skating out to the warning siren while Rock You Like a Hurricane plays.

Ultimately it feels like the developers of NHL 27 were given a shoestring budget and asked to add something new to the game. The intros and goal horns are nice, but also reek of a quick addition that could have been a few weeks of the development cycle — not the marquee addition to a yearly installment of the franchise.

The bad

NHL 27 feels like last year’s game when it comes to the on-ice action, for the most part. There are some very weird things that have happened to the computer A.I. that make it feel like a distinctly worse experience, and elements I haven’t encountered in several years of the game.