Over the coming months game modes and features will be added to NHL 15 via title updates
NHL 15 is the first current-gen entry in the popular hockey sim. It was developed by EA Canada and marks the 24th entry in the NHL series. I’ll admit right here - I’m a huge nerd. My experiences with Ice-Hockey are exclusive to: a Toronto Maple Leafs hat and the Mighty Ducks. So why did I bother take the opportunity to review NHL 15?
Take a look at the sport of Ice-Hockey: men covered in armor with blades on their feet gliding around a ring beating a NHL puck around with sticks. Awesome, right? EA delivers an immaculately presented and visually beautiful experience, but what of the actual NHL 15? The core game seemed to have been on the bench during the development cycle.
Doc and Edzo plus NBC Sports graphics?! We knew this was coming a while ago, but it doesn’t minimize the finished product any bit. This was a change I was hoping to see ever since I saw how great real TV graphics looked in NHL 15 after owning NCAA Basketball 2010 (the one with Blake Griffin on the cover), which featured full integration for both CBS and ESPN. The transitions and arenas appear just like they would during a live game and many a time someone has walked by me playing and said “Wow, that looked real from back here.” Emrick may sound like he’s on quaaludes (to quote the great Casey Bryant during one of our podcast) but there is no way his frenetic style could be perfectly captured in virtual form. Olcyzk provides astute color commentary, but if the development team was all in on the NBC thing, why isn’t the great Pierre McGuire in NHL 15? TSN’s Ray Ferraro takes his place between the benches and solely provides general analysis about how special teams may determine the winner and the like. I don’t know about you, but I’d love hearing Pierre ramble on about every player’s junior team in NHL 15. Also, you can only take hearing about how “hockey is a weird sport in that your best players only play one third of the time” so much, as Doc notes during almost every opening sequence.
NHL 15 proves how little EA Sports respects the intelligence of gamers, charging full retail price for a game that can’t compare to last years offering. Even if this is the only hockey game for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, it is not worth your time or money. I am not an expert on hockey, however, the “Be a Pro” mode has also been stripped down greatly by EA. In the past, you would need to work your way up the ranks of teams. Now, it appears that you are inserted straight into the top ranks of a team. Additionally, a bizarre exclusion from this mode which I noticed while playing was the removal of the option to sim time in between your playtime - meaning you must watch these sessions from the bench.
This being a sports game, the trophy list is a predictable one. Scoring goals, winning games and tournaments and leveling up your Be A Pro skater combine to form the bulk of gamerscore, although there are a couple of bizarre ones included for not skipping over the cutscenes that link together pauses in play. Clearly, someone is very proud of their broadcast quality presentation and are not shy about encouraging you to watch it.
NHL 15 feels like a massive deviation from the established franchise hockey fans have come to love. The gameplay is enjoyable once you adjust to the changes made to the various physics engines, and the variety of teams to play as or against is still fantastic, but it is near impossible to look past the glaring omission of certain game modes or key features. Longtime fans of the franchise or people looking for a deep hockey experience will be disappointed with what the game has to offer as of this writing, although people interested strictly in playing offline as a GM or against friends may find the game provides what they are seeking. EA Sports has announced that over the coming months game modes and features will be added to NHL 15 via title updates, but the reality is that an incomplete game was released at full price under the guise of being on par with previous franchise entries.
