Frank Naresh
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COGConnected Latest Reviews
World Cup Soccer…every 4 years with huge worldwide fanfare the perfect game makes its return with the World Cup tournament. The cup is contended for over a few weeks and usually the soccer, or footie for you purists, is never better, with the very best the game can on stage for fans to watch. The stellar gamesmanship always seems to outweigh the silly antics of some players that look as if they’ve been shot on the pitch. Kidding aside though, this is the very pinnacle of the sport bar none. EA’s 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil has hit the Xbox 360 and PS3. I was assigned the Xbox 360 version for review. The release raised my eyebrows a little though since it did not make it on the Xbox One or the PS4, but I hunkered down for some review duties.
The core gameplay of the NHL series has not really differed much in the last few years. EA has been busy tweaking and adding from game to game to enhance the already fantastic feel. They have employed a “If it ain’t broke why fix it?” attitude. The results speak for themselves, as the series won over 26 awards last year including sports game of the year.
With the fervor of the holiday season well in the rearview mirror gamers everywhere have hit a bit of a dry spell. There has been very little in the way of new and exciting games over the past two months or so. Sure there has been some fantastic DLC for a few games, but nothing major released. Fortunately there is a new game of sorts for the PSP and PS Vita, which I have been indulging in for a couple of weeks now. Corpse Party is a Japanese PSP game that never made to North American shores. Sony’s PSP continues to thrive on the other side of the Pacific and regularly gets interesting and quirky titles like Corpse Party. XSEED Games thought enough to bring the sequel to our shores this time around in the form of Corpse Party: Book of Shadows.
I figured I would delve right into how this new version of our great sport handles. Right off the hop I found that NHL 13 feels tighter and easier to control then previous releases in the series, and the older games control pretty well too. I love how the Xbox 360 controller feels and controls. The buttons are responsive and easy to navigate. One of the key highlights to this year’s game is the new True Performance Skating. EA deems this as a game–changing innovation for the franchise as the skating is now physics based as the mode tries to authentically replicate the explosiveness, momentum and top end speed displayed by today’s NHL players. I struggled with the Skill Stick innovation some years back, but have made huge strides after much practice. I believe the same can be said for True Performance Skating, practice is going to make perfect.