It starts by picking a theme for the draft, which will generate a base team followed by twelve rounds of drafting. Dark Pictures Anthology – House of Ashes review: Ancient EvilĪlso coming over from Madden is Draft Champions, which makes its NHL debut. Here, folks will get to test out some gold-rated players and even some super rare items.Disco Elysium: The Final Cut for Nintendo Switch just doesn’t cut it.Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy review: A farkin’ good time.Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles review: A middling fighting game.Mario Party Superstars review: The return of the OG friendship ender.This issue can still be frustrating for casual or newer players, and can steepen the learning curve quite a bit. Too many times did I aim a pass at a teammate, only to have the puck slide onto a defender’s stick because my AI teammate was skating the other way. There’s also still something off with passing and player awareness to the puck. Blooper goals where the puck slowly slides under the goalie still occur more often than not. It almost seems as if differences in awareness ratings aren’t as clear as they should be, which is disappointing. Despite it being one of the more advertised improvements, not much has changed in that regard. The Goalie AI remained a big question mark coming into this year’s game. The number of gameplay options NHL 17 gives you is staggering, making it worth experimenting with different difficulties and control schemes to see what best suits your fancy. Different tunings for difficulty and controls can also be set from the start, and changed whenever the player so chooses. The team of Mike “Doc” Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and Ray Ferraro provide the play-by-play and rinkside reports for the third straight year. The commentary team choice feels right for this sort of game, but the insipid lines and delivery leave room for improvement in future installments.Ĭoaching Feedback returns as well, with more tips and suggestions geared towards trends that players make in-game. The fantastic in-game NBC graphics package also returns, and looks as good as ever. That being said, some subtle lighting improvements and what appear to be more facial scans still make the game one of the better-looking sports titles out there. That doesn’t mean that the game looks bad, but you wouldn’t really know the difference between the past two iterations and this one by simply looking at them. Giant graphical leaps from year to year aren’t usually expected in sports titles, and NHL is no exception. It takes a little getting used to, but that’s merely a minor complaint. Setting up lines in Hockey Ultimate Team, for example, can be quite jarring at times. On the other, there are some issues with navigating around certain modes. Presentation in NHL 17 is quite the double-edged sword. On one hand, there’s a brand-new menu system that’s sleek and really pops off the screen.