NHL 24’s new controls are a flashy mess

What are the sports highlights? It’s not just the raw athletic skill on display — part of the how-did-they-The following are some of the ways to improve your own ability.This thrill stems from the challenge and danger of playing a game with low odds. A spectacular dive catch could get you in the SportsCenterThe Top 10, but touching the grass as the ball rolls towards the fence on the outer field is more an example of an America’s Funniest Home VideosKind of thing

Flashy plays have always been difficult to pull off in EA’s hockey video games, and rightfully so. It’s all about to change this year. NHL 24The game is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox One. The game’s developers at EA Vancouver and EA Bucharest decided to revamp their long-running control scheme in an attempt to make those jaw-dropping moves easier to do. It’s part of a multifaceted overhaul to the flow of the game on the ice.

I’ve long argued for more accessible controls in simulation sports games. Particularly in EA Sports NHL, part of the experience has been locked away behind a barrier of complex button and stick inputs, despite the series’ excellent tutorials. Here, the admirable goal of simplifying the finger gymnastics required for the skill moves is undone by an implementation that prioritizes them over key controls and actions — even ones as essential as shooting the puck.

Image: EA Vancouver, EA Bucharest/Electronic Arts

Total Control is a new system that puts four different options for handling the puck in front of you. I can now bring the puck between my skater’s legs, do a toe drag, tuck the puck past the goalie with one hand, and employ lacrosse-style maneuvers like “The Michigan” just by pressing one of the controller’s face buttons. The setup is so simple that it’s easy to do these high-flying moves. NHL 24, but it doesn’t turn them into cheat codes. Even in the shootout practice mode, with me alone versus a netminder, these techniques didn’t guarantee any goals.

On defense, some of the functions on face buttons are also different: body-checking is now mapped as circle/B (shoulder check) and square/X(hip check). This dovetails with the game’s updated physics engine, whose new ragdoll animations succeed in delivering a better sense of the bone-crunching impact behind every collision. The addition of icon passing (which allows players to pass directly at teammates, because each player has a designated face button) is another great feature that unlocks some beautiful tic-tactoe games.

Image: EA Vancouver, EA Bucharest/Electronic Arts

This philosophy is sound, as it combines new controls with gameplay changes. The benefits are obvious. It is important to note that the action in both offense and defence can be quite intense. NHL 24 resembles real-life hockey more than ever — and more importantly, that improvement is tangible because the revised controls put more power directly in my hands to make it so. Total Control allows for this. You can find out more about this by clicking here.It’s a great feeling to be responsible for bringing realism into a computer simulation.

Despite these upgrades, though, I ended up switching back to the old Skill Stick control scheme — which has remained largely untouched since 2008’s NHL 09, remarkably — after trying to acclimate to the new setup for a few days.

Total Control’s focus on flashy movements has displaced vital functions away from the buttons and into a less convenient location. In the Skill Stick controls, the circle/B and square/X buttons make line changes — a feature that I’ll use dozens of times during a single game, exponentially more often than I might attempt a toe drag. The D-pad is used to change lines in Total Control, which I find more cumbersome because my thumb has to be taken off the left stick. This setup became frustrating after a few times of getting knocked out of the game while switching lines.

Image: EA Vancouver, EA Bucharest/Electronic Arts

Unfortunately, reverting to Skill Stick controls isn’t a cure-all, thanks to a baffling second change that applies to both schemes in NHL 24. The right stick can be used to protect against a bodycheck. My skater will let go of the ball and do a small hop in order to take the impact. It’s not uncommon that I inadvertently click the stick while trying to shoot — and you can imagine how infuriating it is to lose out on a golden scoring opportunity because your puck carrier jumped instead of taking a shot. It’s so bad that I’ll be shocked if the developers don’t backtrack on this in a future patch.

It all reminds me of their attempt to overhaul the series’ beloved career mode, Be a Pro, three years ago: a promising update torpedoed by confounding design decisions. Total Control is more effective and may be a better option for online players, who will have the ability to use the new skill moves in order to outskate their opponent. But attempting those showy plays in a game always carries a risk of fumbling the puck away — and, in the process, earning the dreaded style-over-substance label.