The graphics are fantastic – both crisp and smooth – and NHL 19 is a truly immersive playing experience across the board. Control of the players has gotten meaningfully more precise since the prior iteration (NHL 18), and the result is a truly magical game that makes playing solid positional defense every bit as exciting as scoring a picturesque cross-ice one-timer goal. It’s the new bells and whistles that you’ll hear about in the commercials and advertisements…Īnd yes, it’s definitely a ton of fun to play on the frozen pond…īut it’s that last sentence – as relates to the core gameplay – where NHL 19 shines the brightest. The game was for a brief moment even more popular and successful than the Madden franchise (remember Tecmo and Joe Montana Football?), and it’s retained its hooks on me… 26 years later, here I am reviewing the latest edition of the franchise, NHL 19. Their second edition, NHLPA ’93, was the first to have a license with the players’ association, and the ability to control the likes of Pat LaFontaine and Brett Hull – insomuch as their “likenesses” amounted to little more than a pixellated name alongside their avatar – was intoxicating. It was during the NHL’s magical 1992-93 season (captured beautifully in Todd Denault’s A Season in Time) that I was first exposed to EA’s hockey video game, by a hockey fanatic named Marc Brunengraber.

Nhl 19 reviews