It is NHL08, slightly patched. Nothing more, nothing less. If anything this is what the game should have been by the end of last year.

Personally I know I was looking at garbage when they kept the entire same intro and just superimposed Dion Phaneuf over last years Eric Staal. Sure enough the game was exactly the same just reskinned to look and feel ever so slightly different.

The gameplay feels only slightly more fluid. Players don’t feel like they move on train tracks quite so much, and the monstrous crunching bodychecks have been eliminated for the most part.

EA still hasn’t tweaked goalie or defensive AI to defend against the all too easy one timer of slap-pass goals. I had enough the first time I saw the goalie dance helplessly in the net confused as the puck danced near the lettering on the back of his jersey. I could see myself bored to tears with the repition of trying to block one timers in this years multiplayer, much like last years, in which every game degenerated into a one-timer war once you got to the top 4000 or so players.

I guess it is better than the half assed effort of a demo that is NFL Head Coach 09, which crashes on me repeatedly. When John Riccitiello boasted improved QA he probably meant that for the fiscal year of 09 forward, because I haven’t seen any of it yet.