Often considered something of a neglected child among EA’s annual sports titles, the NHL series seems to habitually suffer from a lack of innovation and substantial updates from one year to the next. It’s surprising then to find that NHL 24 implements some noticeable changes, particularly on the ice where there have been enough updates to likely force you to switch up your style of play from last year. While not all of these alterations work as well as you’d hope, you can’t help but appreciate that there’s at least been some serious effort invested into throwing ideas against the boards to help differentiate this one from the last. As Michael Scott on The Office said that Wayne Gretzky once said: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” You only wish that this spirit of creativity was extended to some of NHL 24‘s modes and features that appear as if they were almost completely untouched from NHL 23.
It’s surprising how much something as simple as icon passing can improve your offense by eliminating the kind of errant passes that would end up previously nowhere near your target. The new sustained pressure system that sees you draining the energy of your opponent by hemming them into their own end does an admirable job of re-creating the effect of tilting the ice in your favor by cycling the puck, although it may be a tad too overpowered at the moment. Even the card-collecting Hockey Ultimate Team mode has learned some new tricks by introducing HUT Moments that are an improvement on the tedious challenges of the past.
NHL 24‘s new total control configuration is a bit of a mixed bag, reducing the skill gap by making it easier to pull off dekes while also requiring you to be more precise and judicious when you try to lay out an adversary with a big hit. Modes like Be A Pro and Franchise return without any major changes, something that should be especially disheartening to those who prefer to play offline. Meanwhile, the online World of Chel’s introduction of a Battle Pass will soon make the mode less appealing to anyone who doesn’t want to spend anything more than what it cost to buy the game itself.
Let’s drop the puck and grind hard into the corners to discuss what parts of NHL 24 are lighting the lamp this year and which of its shots continue to sail wide of the net.
What I Like
Icon Passing
Responding to a long-standing request from the community, NHL 24 finally provides the option to use icon passing to better get the puck to whichever teammate you want to target. In the past, it could be more of a crapshoot than you’d expect just to direct a pass to someone by using the analog stick. It wasn’t uncommon to watch the puck instead head to a different teammate than intended or, in the more embarrassing instances, to no one in particular.
Icon passing rectifies this issue and, once you get used to it (some experience with NBA 2K will help, as they’ve used the feature for years), allows you to pull off some slick assists that you would not have been able to make in the past. It’s so effective in fact that it ultimately leaves you longing for the chance to be able to use a similar mechanic when defending to change to a specific player.
Sustained Offensive Pressure
One of the bolder additions to NHL 24 is a system that causes a team in the attacking zone to gradually exhaust the energy of the defending team by continuing to possess the puck inside the zone for an extended period. It’s something that works at least in theory, realistically rewarding a team for continuing to apply pressure to to their opponent.
In practice though, perhaps the most divisive part of the new feature is how quickly you’re able to progress to full pressure. The defending unit will then notice how it feels as if your team is skating in mud until you’re able to clear the puck out of the zone. It’d be a little more realistic to see this further tuned in future patches to have it take a little longer to build up to full pressure. This might help to tone down the number of desperation saves you see from flailing goalies when they get tired too. It’d also be nice to at least have the option to remove the overlays updating you on the progress of the pressure from the ice and boards.
HUT Moments
While it’s impossible to completely endorse the card-collecting Hockey Ultimate Team mode because of its usual prevalence of microtransactions, the mode at least deserves some credit this year for trying some new things. To wit, the new HUT Moments have you playing through significant events for teams and players within the NHL’s rich history. To accomplish this, the game swipes a page from MLB The Show‘s Diamond Dynasty playbook by sometimes forcing you to achieve goals while locked in as one specific player. This kind of variety spices up an offline experience that could be awfully bland in the past and often felt more like a chore than entertainment.
CPU Difficulty
The NHL series has long had issues with putting forth a CPU opponent in single-player modes that was authentic and challenging. The AI could be easy to exploit in the past even on the highest difficulties and the CPU would frequently rely on unrealistic ping-pong passing to beat you rather than employing the sort of tactics you’d see in a real game.
The CPU is smarter in NHL 24, relentlessly forechecking to generate turnovers when you’re stuck in your own end. When they’re on the rush, players will dig deep into the arsenal of weapons the game offers to pull off dekes that can blow by you in an instant if you’re not careful. It’s not just on Superstar difficulty that you’ll be faced with a formidable challenge either, as even All-Star difficulty will leave you sweating out some close games.
World of Chel
In my opinion, World of Chel has been one of the best online modes in sports gaming for years now, and while that hasn’t really changed in NHL 24, there are some indications that it might be headed in the wrong direction. The institution of full cross-play for the first time in the series opens up matchmaking to ensure that it’s easier to find teammates and opponents to play in 6-vs-6 and 3-vs-3 games. The addition of a new quick 3-vs-3 mode that’s done in one period is a godsend to anyone who’s pressed for time and helps prevent blowout games that you’re forced to ride out until the end.
The big concern in the mode though is the addition of a battle pass that will be free for the first season, presumably to get you hooked, but will cost extra in future seasons if you want to unlock all the rewards it has to offer. Though most of these will be cosmetic items and equipment that you can wear during games, it does seem that there will be certain finely tuned builds that you’ll be able to unlock to give you a slight edge. It’s obviously not quite as egregious as the competitive advantages offered by NBA 2K24‘s season pass, but it’s certainly a sign that the mode is moving towards a pay-to-play mindset.
What I Don’t Like
Total Controls
The introduction of a new total control scheme in NHL 24 shows some promise, but it will need some tweaking to add some balance. For starters, its name is a tad misleading because it suggests that you’ll be able to map actions to specific buttons yourself and sadly that’s not the case. A main draw instead is having all of the game’s dekes assigned to the four face buttons, effectively making it easier to pull off flashy moves that could be tricky to access in the past.
While it’s nice to be able to reach into your bag of tricks for a behind-the-back pass or a between-the-legs deke when the moment calls for it, there’s no doubt that it shrinks the skill gap some to have these now be simpler to execute. It’s especially evident with having the lacrosse move, still a rarity to see unleashed in the NHL, tied to the push of a single button with this new configuration (at least the ability to perform it successfully is tied to player’s attributes so it can’t be abused too frequently).
Another area where the total control setup creates some confusion is in how you defend now with throwing your body around. You have more choice in the way you want to connect with someone, forcing you to decide when a shove will be sufficient, a hip check is the play, or it’s time to wind up for a truly bone-crushing body blow. The options at your disposal create some new strategy to defending, as making the wrong call when your opponent is on the attack can lead to an odd-man rush should you end up out of position. There are some clumsy animations associated with each of the hitting possibilities though and they can sometimes produce frustrating moments, especially as you’re still learning when each hitting option can be most effective.
Be A Pro & Franchise
With more innovation on display in NHL 24 than usual, there were bound to be areas of the game that were neglected this year. It should come as no surprise then that this burden should fall on the game’s offline modes that can’t yield EA any additional income. The biggest victim is the Be A Pro career mode that honestly hasn’t seen any meaningful changes in a few years at this point.
That means everything from the mode’s intro to the shallow interactions you have with teammates and front office as you ascend from the minors to the NHL will be mighty stale if you’ve already suffered through the lackluster experience in recent years. Franchise mode is a little better in that there have been some useful quality-of-life changes like having players develop and lose X-Factors throughout their career, but the overall framework and presentation return largely intact.
Goal Celebrations
It may be more of a minor quibble when compared with the previous items, however the new focused camera on a player after they’ve scored a goal seems more suitable for an arcade-style hockey game than a simulation. The cheesy cutscene that shines a spotlight on the scorer is too dramatic and breaks the immersion of the broadcast style that the game otherwise is attempting to emulate.
To make matters worse, you only have a small window of time after putting the puck in the net to show off your desired goal celebration. It’s way too easy to miss that window and be stuck celebrating your big achievement without the flair you intended.
World Of Chel Customization
Since the inception of the World of Chel (or EASHL as it was previously known), the NHL series has always struggled with how to best give you the ability to equip the attire, equipment, and animations that you accrue as rewards. There’s been another attempt at simplifying the process this year, and yet it still makes the operation needlessly convoluted. The biggest oversight this time around is not including an option to copy your desired equipment to your home and away attire or to the various modes within the WOC. This causes it to take far too long to select the same skates, stick, and helmet individually for every possible way that you can hit the ice.
Bottom Line
In a year when you can’t really level the entire game with the usual copy-and-paste complaints, NHL 24 presents some fresh ideas to make the game more accessible and realistic. The new offensive pressure system emphasizes an important part of the sport but is still in need of some balancing to perfect how it works.
This new feature fares better than the introduction of a total control configuration that dumbs down how to execute fancy maneuvers and complicates the business of body checking your opponent. HUT Moments provide some added depth to the single-player experience within the game’s card-collecting modes. It’s a shame though that offline modes like Be A Pro and Franchise have received little attention during this development cycle. The looming prospect of a battle pass within the World of Chel that you will be required to purchase in order to receive certain rewards taints an otherwise stellar online mode.
