Offline you'll find a more traditional co-op experience, with the good ol top down hockey game available to play with up to four players on Xbox 360 and six on PlayStation 3. Players can lock themselves to a position or opt to cycle around. This mode can be played in quickplay, but more importantly, it can be done in a season. This means brothers and sisters can sit down and play an entire NHL season together, working to capture the Stanley Cup.
As a side note, I also recommend checking out the Create-A-Play section in offline play. It's a lot of fun to script your own on ice plays, and the use of the in game is trigger automatically based on your strategy.
All in all NHL 10 looks and feels like one of the best hockey games to date. As someone who was extremely critical of EA earlier this decade when I felt the 2k Series stole the crown, I can honestly say that EA is back and they've set the bar extremely high. There's simply too many options, game modes and content for hockey fans to list here. Simply put, NHL 10 is the best overall hockey game we've gotten to date.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: NHL 10 offers traditional offline play for up to 6 players. Each person can lock themselves to a player position and work together as a team to win hockey games.Online play is a bit different, while you can't play 6 players against the AI, the experience is extremely co-op. A online league is created and you'll play from a unique camera perspective for your position. Your custom team will face off against other teams of 2 or more players. There's no voice chat between teams - so no trash talking - but there is voicechat among your own team.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.