Tis the season for beta codes and first impressions. I got my hands on the NHL 17 beta and have been playing it for over a week now.   The beta includes 3 game modes. EASHL, HUT and Online Vs. I mostly played the EASHL portion but did play all modes and my overall impression is that this game has a promising future.   EASHL This game mode is one of my favorites and my team and I logged in tons of ice time with this mode. You create your player, create your team and hit the ice. Each player can control a position of their chosing and like wise for your opponents. You then enter the dressing room lock in your roster and search for an opponent. You start of in division 10 and will need to work your way through mini seasons getting as many points as possible to move up. If you don’t you will stay in the same division or worse you will be sent down. Some huge creation overhauls with jerseys, arenas and player appearances getting a complete upgrade finally. Also some new celebrations are added which make it more fun when you score. The more you play the better you get and the more exp you gain to unlock various things for your created player. Makes for a fun progression system when playing through. Overall the feel of EASHL when you hit the ice is 10x better than last years game. New player builds have been added as well. It feels really smooth and the gameplay is great, well minus the shitty goalies which still havent been fucking changed!! stupid EA. [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P90HCaBgmm4[/embedyt]     Hockey Ultimate Team EA’s bread in butter is in this mode and I must say the dashboard in this beta for HUT is fantastic. Very smooth compared to last year and doesn’t take forever when opening packs. It’s still a blast buying and selling players or even buying a shit load of packs and watching and hoping you can score some awesome players! Not too much has changed in this game mode except now you have better chances of creating a perfect team. Each player has a set skill set whether its a speedster or dangler or any of the various types of players. You can now unlock specially team bonuses if you have the right amount of player per skills set. Take a look below at the video [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTj0duKLu8I[/embedyt]   Online VS Nothing exciting really in this mode just the same old vs mode online or against your friends.   Overall I think this could be the best NHL game that has come out so far with is various upgrades to EASHL and HUT not to mention some other modes coming out into the game as well. Let’s see what the final game has in store for us but things are looking promising right now.   Cheers Folks!