IGN Game Review: NHL 27

0:00This is IGN. Hey there, I'm Travis Hoyam, one of the hosts of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Each weekday on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, we talk through the business news you need to know and the story is moving stocks on Wall Street. On weekends, we play in personal finance strategies and dive into the industry shaping tomorrow and host the experts, authors and executives that understand them. Tuning for insights and a long-term perspective on investing and of course stock ideas, plenty of them. To quote a listener, it pays to listen. Check us out and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Nothing is worse than last year, but very little is better either. This is your IGN review of NHL27 by Mark Deshop. As it is with so many annual sports series, incremental change has been the name of the game for EA's NHL franchise for quite some time now. Rather than attempting to drastically alter its foundations, developer EA Van Coover

1:00has largely focused on making small tweaks that aim to dial up the authenticity wherever possible. It's a strategy that continues with NHL27, an annual entry that mostly feels the same as it has in recent years. The actual hockey remains strong and there are a handful of small but welcome changes to be found, but the familiar feeling of nearly everything else is otherwise worn thin. There are no new modes to speak of this year, staples like franchise, build a pro, world of shell and hockey ultimate team, serve as the main options alongside smaller modes like ones and threes, plus tournaments like the world juniors. The familiarity from past entries even extends to the menus, which look exactly the same as they did in NHL26. Everything looks so similar in fact that some people might think they booted up last years game by mistake. There's an argument to be made for not fixing what isn't broken, but when a sequel doesn't look any different right from the start-up screens, it feels like a bad sign, especially

2:04for a series that often gets critiqued for its lack of differentiation. In 2024, EA Sports made the decision to move the NHL series exclusively to PS5 and Xbox series X and S. In theory, moving away from the previous console generation should have resulted in prettier graphics, but NHL27 continues to look stuck in the past. NHL26 featured some weird areas where team logos would get cut off in specific screens, and while that problem has been resolved or at least lessened this year, there are a lot of other lingering graphical issues throughout. The addition of playbooks is one of the biggest changes in terms of the on-ice action. The 32 real-life teams of the NHL have a lot of nuances that make them feel distinct from one another, and EA Vancouver has created specific playbooks to reflect that. When selecting a team, there's now an option to use their assigned playbook or to switch to one that better matches your own style. For example, if you find that the AI teammates on the Red Wings play too conservatively in

3:08the neutral zone, you can choose a playbook that encourages more aggression. Figuring out how these combinations work adds a bit more depth to the package, as well as increased strategy and opportunities for creativity. Those that enjoy customization options like this have be a pro mode to lean on as well, which allows the creation of an original character that can be taken through an NHL career. I've often enjoyed this mode because it feels a lot closer to playing the actual sport of hockey. You're not constantly switching between players on the ice, instead focusing on a single guy. Unfortunately, this is one of the modes most blatantly similar to NHL26. Press conferences are pretty much unchanged, with the same grown-inducing questions meant to increase or decrease your brand in popularity with your fans, teammates, and the organization. Parts of this mode felt stale last year, and basically nothing has been done to breathe new life into it. Hockey is one of the greatest sports in the world, and NHL27 remains enjoyable largely due

4:10to that simple fact. The satisfaction of delivering a bone-crushing hit or snapping a wrist shot past a gold tender is just as effective as ever, and tiny tweaks to stuff like stadiums and music continue to add authenticity and small doses. But there are no illusions that anything truly substantial has changed this year. With franchises like NHL hits and NHL2K long dead, there really aren't any other options on the market. The slack of competition puts the hockey faithful in a difficult position, and doubly so since there weren't many changes in NHL26 compared to NHL25 to begin with, the handful of differences are mostly welcome, nothing is worse than last year, but very little is better either. It's a shame that NHL27 is still stuck in the past. NHL27's IGN score? Six out of ten. Thanks for listening to IGN. My name is Tony Jackson, and for the latest NHL27 updates, visit us at IGN.com.

5:11Spoken layer.