NHL 15 Review

After taking an extra year to prepare, EA Sports finally released its popular NHL franchise to the next-gen community in the form of NHL 15.

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Touting new puck and player physics as well as an overhauled presentation system, EA Sports claimed that NHL 15 was going to be the NHL video game that fans have wanted. Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

Before getting into the bad, let’s talk about the good, which there actually is a bit of.

On the ice, NHL 15 plays as well as it ever has on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The players have a nice flow to them while they skate, and the puck moves the way a real piece of frozen rubber does on a slab of ice. The passes are crisp and the shots move the way the should when they are hit by a stick, post and/or body.

The AI plays, for the most part, how the AI should in a sports game. It makes the right decisions with the puck and knows how to exploit mistakes made in the defensive zone. It’s apparent that EA worked on the AI for playing games against the CPU, and it has paid off with how they perform on a game-to-game basis.

Visually, NHL 15 looks absolutely stunning. The arena designs, for the buildings that EA Sports secured the rights to (sorry, Blackhawks fans), look pretty spot on, aside from the banners in the ceiling. The biggest drawback regarding the arenas is that many teams don’t have accurate goal horns, which can prove to be a bummer to the diehard community.

In terms of how the players look, NHL 15 boasts the most realistic looking players the series has ever seen. Most of the league’s players have had their faces scanned into the game, and look nearly identical to their real-life counterparts.

But for how well the game plays and looks, there is a lot wrong with NHL 15, and it mostly deals with features omitted from the game.

Gone are popular modes like Online Team Play, EA Sports Hockey League and GM Connected. In their places are, well, absolutely nothing. Claiming development restrictions, EA removed those three modes from the next-gen version of the game.

The game’s Be-A-Pro and Be-A-GM modes have been watered down to the point of near unplayability. The Be-A-Pro mode now simply entails the user creating his player, choosing the team he wants to play for and playing his games. Gone are the days of trying to prove your draft stock and work your way up in the organization. You only play for your NHL club. Players can’t even skip to their shifts anymore. That’s right, you have to watch the AI play when you’re not on the ice.

Be-A-GM is even more watered down. Players can no play preseason games, stats aren’t kept for players sent down to the minors, the ability to play as your AHL affiliate is gone, no fantasy draft at the start and, finally, the ability to draft players during the offseason is out. More on that later.

There is some good news regarding game modes, Hockey Ultimate Team is still available and, nearly, fully featured. The only major feature removed was the ability to play against friends. It really does make sense, keep the game mode that people have to pay even more money for in order to have real success.

[Related: NHL 15 post release plans]

And sure, the developers are adding features like drafting in Be-A-GM and Coach Feedback in Be-A-Pro as part of the game’s post-launch content updates, but this is a review based on a game as it stands now. And right now, aside from Play Now and Online Versus, if you aren’t an Ultimate Team fan, there really is no long-term replay value with this game.

NHL 15 is a game that took a step forward with gameplay and visuals, but countered that with a few large steps backward in terms of the series as a whole. EA Sports lost a lot of respect from fans for the watered-down game despite claiming that they have been working on the game for two years.

If you are looking to get the missing features that aren’t in NHL 15 on the PS4 and Xbox One version, the PS3 and Xbox 360 version has you covered. Unfortunately, that version of the game is simply a roster update title that plays and feels exactly like NHL 14.