NHL 15 Review

Carrying an annual franchise from one console generation to the next is no easy task. But as EA Sports has demonstrated, it is certainly viable, with last year’s FIFA and Madden not missing a beat being ported onto the newly available consoles. The NHL development team, meanwhile, chose to stick with the current generation in 2013, citing budget and time constraints. Great things were promised for when the next-gen version of the hockey sim franchise did arrive. As NHL 15 skates into stores this week, the title offers revamped presentation and somewhat improved gameplay, but shockingly not much else.

Although it may have been considered normal in the past for sports games to drop features when making the console generation transition, EA Sports themselves have shown that it’s possible to offer a complete package right from the start. Players looking forward to playing some hockey, however, will be disappointed to find that NHL 15 is anything but a complete experience. It starts with the basics – gone is the ability to edit NHL players or create a custom team, or even adjust AI behavior. Practice mode, which used to offer a variety of scenarios to practice both team and individual drills, is stripped down to a free skate against a lonesome goalie. Creating custom plays is also gone, so you must now wholly rely on AI to get into a good position.

Moving on to the gameplay modes, there aren’t many left. Gone are Season, Tournament, Battle for the Cup, and Playoff modes. Sure, they were simply shortcuts to get to some exciting parts of an NHL season experience, but the variety was none the less appreciated. The NHL 94 and Winter Classic modes are missing as well, though not that many folks played them. NHL Moments Live does remain available, so there's some fun to be had recreating various scenarios that mirror events of the real sports.

The recently revamped Live the Life mode has seemingly reverted back to a basic Be a Pro mode, with all off-ice interaction with teammates, public, and press removed. You create a player (using an existing pro is no longer possible) and get either randomly assigned into an NHL team or select one manually. The Memorial Cup tryout period is gone, along with pre-season. No longer do you spend any time in the CHL or AHL either, slotting straight into the NHL roster. On the ice, the option to call your own shifts is back, and it turns out to be a savior because you can no longer simulate time when on the bench. Not a big deal if you were the type of fan who played with authentic Be a Pro settings, but the rest will be bored to tears watching the AI skate around. You get season objectives as before, but there are no longer any in-game tasks or coach feedback. Overall, Be a Pro is a shell of its former self and only the most hardcore of fans will have the patience for it.

The only other major offline mode is Be a GM. You still choose to take control of a team, and hope to guide them through the years by managing the player roster, signing contracts, handling trades, and so forth. Player information screens have been revamped to provide better clarity, and now include life long career stats for the pros. But Be a GM has too been stripped bare of important functions. There is no longer an entry draft, as the game simply assigns you players from a list. You do still get to scout talent, but the ability seems moot when you can't select any players at the draft. Just in the same way you can't play in the minor leagues in Be a Pro, you cannot do so in Be a GM. Not only that, you can't even manage your affiliate club's lineup. Transferring players between your club and the minors is simply picking from a list. The GM tracker, a tool that organized your progress and presented RPG-like objectives, is gone. Simulation times have barely improved. Be a GM mode is now basically just a continuous seasons mode with some scouting and free agents. It's another huge step back, and shallow not just by the standards set by its predecessors, but by modern sports games in general.

The excellent life-like Action Tracker simulation engine that was introduced only a few years ago is missing, and probably the reason why you're not able to sim your shifts in Be a Pro. In GM mode, you similarly suffer, as there is no longer any kind of live ticker, nor the ability to intervene during the simulation. You simply skip through to the next calendar date, and observe the final score. It's back to early 2000s design, and a huge setback for the franchise that seemed to be moving in the right direction.

Perhaps you're not the type of player that spends time playing against AI or building your long-term dynasty, so you'll be eager to learn about what the multiplayer options in NHL 15 are. Well, unfortunately the trend of cutting features continues here as well. The recently introduced Be a GM Connected is no longer offered. The franchise's most prolific online offering, EASHL, where players could create and grow their custom player, while participating in drop in or team games against others, is absent. The thousands of competitive hockey fans will have to find other ways to entertain themselves, perhaps by playing the basic online versus or (as the developers promise) Online Team Play with real teams and players only, to be patched in at a future date.

Hockey Ultimate Team, EA Sports' most profitable venture across its entire sports game catalogue, is included but even this mode has reduced functionality. Your goal in HUT is still to build the best team you can, while earning coins and opening player card packs. Fans who played this mode in the past will get a returning bonus, and it's fairly easy to construct a decent team right from the outset. However only two game mode options are available, either an offline game against the AI or an online Seasons game. Gone are the tournaments (online and off), single player Seasons, and you can't even Play a Friend anymore. Menus seem just as slow as those in NHL 14 HUT, and browsing the Auction House for players still takes more time than it should. It's surprising that, given the great financial results that Ultimate Team modes bring to EA, the developers could not produce a complete experience in NHL 15.

With so much sheer content missing from the game, at least the on-ice product will be a truly next-generation experience, right? Well, sort of. NHL 15 gameplay is indeed improved over last year; the skating engine is refined and players feel like they have weight to them. The game now offers occasional automatic dekes; they are effortless on the part of the player thus making them accessible, and lead to more good looking scoring opportunities. With that, the manual dekes have been toned down, so the game now looks a bit more realistic without having every opponent you face try to figure skate down the ice. On defence, stick lift and poke checking effectiveness could still use some work but are tolerable for the most part.

New collision physics mean that multiple players can get involved by a hit and stumble all over each other, even though it does look silly at times. The puck physics have been adjusted to behave more realistically, more like a puck and less like a ball, and goalies are tuned down to be less superhuman. Opponent AI has remained largely the same, making some smart plays and having more variety in their tactics – while still often taking dumb penalties or going offside. Penalties are still rather inconsistent, but at least not as frequent. Finally, most players feel and behave very similarly. Besides some noticeable differences in skating speed, pulling off big hits or complex dekes is just as viable with the pros as it is with the relative rookies, regardless of rating. So while improved, nothing about NHL 15 gameplay screams next-generation.

The last piece of the puzzle is the presentation, the most notable positive difference between NHL 15 and its predecessors. The years-old, outdated commentary team has been replaced by NBC pundits Mike 'Doc' Emrick and Eddie Olczyk, with TSN analyst Ray Ferraro commenting at ice level. Speaking of TV, the broadcast has been rebranded to closely match the NBC as well, which adds further realism. Almost all of the real NHL arenas were added to the game, along with trademark goal horns. Spectators have also been drastically improved, with more variety in looks and behaviour. On the ice, player movements and interactions are smooth, and the player faces look admirably close to the real thing. There are a couple of new cameras to use for gameplay, and replays now show off the net cam.

But even in its most easily noticeable new feature, NHL 15 is lacking. While a new play-by-play duo was a long needed change, the end result is underwhelming. The commentators lack the energy of the previous duo, and don’t compare to their real TV commentary. Some of the passion seems to be missing, and there are already a lot of repeated lines. The option to import custom music into the game is also unavailable. Fans seem less involved in the game now, as they seldom cheer – and even keep sitting as the home team lifts the cup.

Playing on Xbox One, the game seemed to have an overabundance of blur, making player names on jerseys difficult to read and out of focus during play. While the UI elements are clearly in 1080p, the action on the ice seemed to be upscaled. Player jerseys have a nice new cloth effect, but it is very overdone and looks unrealistic. Pretty much all out of play broadcast elements are recycled from years past – the same shots of goalie warmups, players skating around, and so forth. Even the Stanley Cup winning cutscene is pretty much the same as before. The new user menus are finally clean of clutter (due to lack of content, unfortunately) but still manage to stutter at times. Having to use the trigger to navigate between submenus never becomes comfortable.

NHL 15 is a disappointment. Being left behind last year while its counterparts made the jump to new generation of consoles, fans were promised a game rebuilt from the ground up. Considering the huge amount of features that are missing, one can certainly believe that. But to charge full price for what is a quarter of a game seems senseless. Sure, the gameplay is improved (though fails to impress with any one aspect) and the presentation got a much needed facelift, but this is still a poor effort. When other major brands under the same publisher were able to make a seamless transition, a year earlier to boot, one wonders what exactly went wrong for the NHL team. Regardless, right now NHL 15 offers such poor value to both newcomers and existing fans that it’s difficult to recommend to anyone at all. Perhaps with a few features restored via patches and a price reduction, hockey enthusiasts could lace up for a small preview of what the future holds.