The core design flaw are the thumbsticks non adhesive texture and convex shape creates a slippery surface making your thumbs slip off in high action moments. For sports games such as NHL10 and Shooters this means the difference between deking out your opponent or getting shot in the face because your thumb slipped off the stick and hit the start button. Fail.

While there are other flaws such as the glistening plastic used for the casing, the awkward ergonomic placement of R1/L1 and odd range of motion with the triggers making it difficult to pull off holding R1 and R2 simultaneously, I will concentrate on the thumbsticks.

There’s a company called http://www.geltabz.com/ who apparently had the same gripes as I and came up with a rather decent solution for this.

Cost with Shipping to Canada

Total: $21.88

A little on the expensive side for two little pieces of rubber but that’s mostly the shipping cost. If you’re in the states you can find them at gamestop. Otherwise, gather some buddies and order in bulk.

GelTabz in package

Instructions (simple):

Concave vs Convex

You must first remove the existing caps on the PS3 thumb sticks.

I used a small pain of needle nose pliers.

Slide the GelTabz on and boom, concave sticky goodness.

So far so good, I love these. There is absolutely no slippage and thinking I should have purchased more for all my ps3 and xbox joysticks.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Download TIGHTVNC, google it. Install on both machines.

Now speed it up:

• In TightVNC Server settings set the poll refresh to full screen and the delay to 1ms.
• In TightVNC Client settings choose High Speed mode if you’re on a LAN.

The removal of the following bugs that have been in the game since NHL08 or are new to NHL10.

Invisibility
Where stuff goes through stuff. The lack of collision detection in this game is brutal.

Magic Brakes
Your player stops for no reason or starts to skate 0.5 miles an hour

Floppy Jalopies
Your pass goes 0.5 miles an hour towards any direction but the one you were pointing at

Ballerina Goalie
Goalie goes into spinerama animation way to often

CPU Cyborg Masterminds
Sometimes the CPU players becomes incredibly invincible

CPU Tardation
Sometimes the CPU players will do things that blow your mind, like skate away from a loose puck on a 1 on 1

Penalty shot breakaway bonanza
Way too many tripping calls on breakaways

Wrap crap
Wrap around goals glitch… lame

Zig Zag Power Wrister ( not to be confused with go go power rangers )
The new curve shot

Poke choke
Poke checking is useless so people use LB. A complete overdose of people getting down on their knees, this ain’t no brothel.

Straight out of Montreal, female vocal chops with melodies that slay your soul. Come on, gotta love it!

Clusterfuck #1. Purchasable Booster Packs, Equipment and Booster Slots

Why is this a clusterfuck? First off, it’s absurd to create the most realistic hockey simulation, then sprinkle it with toques, graphiti pads, cammo helmets or plain and simple Golden equipment… I mean what the fuck kind of contradiction is that? Here’s what takes the cake, you buy this shit to increase your player’s skills, with A FUCKIN CREDIT CARD. Can you sense the happy in my all caps? Kudos to the management team over at EA because this is a genius cash cow, but what a fuckin disasterpeice.

Clusterfuck #2. Configuring Purchasable Booster Packs, Equipment and Booster Slots

Ok, so with the combination of Helmet,Skates,Stick and Gloves you have 4 rows of slots, each row contains 3 columns of slots. Let’s do some math.

5+ is $2.25

3+ is $1.67

1+ is $1.12

Helmet ( with 3 boost slots ) $2.25

Skates ( with 3 boost slots ) $2.25

Stick ( with 3 boost slots ) $2.25

Gloves ( with 3 boost slots ) $2.25

Worst case scenario, upgrading your dude full pin is
———————————

Equipment: $2.25 x 4 = $9

Slots: 4 Columns x 3 row of 5+ @ $2.25 = $45
———————————

GRAND TOTAL = Suck my dick dollars. I mean $54

You’re reading this right, $54 dollars for virtually, fuck all. That takes balls. If you have a wife or girlfriend, I strongly suggest you don’t tell her you purchased this shit because she’ll probably stop fucking you. I’m lucky though, my wife is incredibly awesome.

Clusterfuck #4. The locking up of your unlocked purchased goodies

Oh wait there’s more. Once you purchase all your shiny gear. There’s a possibility of them not working. Here I was skating around with my fire skates and douche bag toque and my 95 slap shot power when all of a sudden I wanted to make changes to some of my attributes, everything I purchased became locked again. Couldn’t use anything I purchased.

Emailed EA, they offered suggestions, nothing helped so they told me to call sony. Did that, ya right, this is the bowels of suicidal tech support. Called EA, they escalated to tier 3 support. No response from them so had to take matter in to my own hands with some good old trouble shoot’n. I eventually solved my own problem by having to delete my entire account on ps3 loosing a bunch of shit, mostly time and sanity. Fix is here if you need it btw…

Clusterfuck #4. Disconnection Problems

There’s a slew of people having disconnection issues. Luckily I’m not one of them, but people on my club are having this problem. They claim not having it when they create a new PSNID, but my theory is the same that fixed my lock problem. Delete your account and re-create it.

Clusterfuck #5. Collision Issues.

Not really a clusterfuck but has been my main gripe with NHL series since 08. When I block the fuckin puck, that puck better not go directly through my body. Sticks, pucks, bodies going directly through sticks, pucks bodies just ruins the game. If I put a stick through your head, you’re probably not going to get up and there’s going to be a fuckin mess on the ice.

Conclusion

While this whole rant was incredibly negative, don’t get me wrong, best fuckin game ever and I know the crew over at EA worked like crazed monkeys to get this game out. This booster pack shit probably created lots of tension in team meetings and you can’t fix everything with deadlines I know so don’t take this to heart. I appreciate the hard work and magnificent game, minus these quirks.

Rock on.

I would purchase this and see them live in an instant. Rock on! Too bad I can’t find more info about them…

1. Yie Ar Kung Fu ( Fuck I loved this game )
2. Track & Field
3. Bubble Bobble
4. Wonderboy (Unfortunately I can only find the shitty C64 Version)
5. 1941 – Counter Attack
6. Arkanoid
7. Black Tiger
8. Dragon’s Lair
9. Gauntlet
10. Kung Fu
11. Pac Land
12. Spy Hunter
13. Tapper