NHL 15
Producer: Electronic Arts
Release Date: September 9, 2014
Platform: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Sports
Missed Goal
Written by Josh Schilling
In the two years that I have been writing articles for this magazine, I was surprised to discover that this is my first review of a sports game. It is not because I don’t dig sports games. Far from it, in fact, as I’ve been immersed in the genre for many, many years, and some of my top gaming moments of all time are sports related. So I am happy to step out into batters box, stare down the linebackers, square up my slap shot, and hopefully hit nothing but net.
I enjoy hockey, and I have always had a lot of fun playing it on a video game console. I especially loved the mid-90’s NHL’s, and I enjoyed revisiting that style of play with last years’ entry into the EA NHL franchise. Now we have NHL 15, the first hockey game on the next-gen consoles, and my hockey aficionado writing partner here at RUKUS who penned the NHL 14 review was slightly prophetic when he said, “…the lack of a next-gen version whets the appetite for what hockey will look like… Having to build it for both generations will keep it handcuffed for a year or two, but imagining the gritty sport realized in higher-definition…is exciting.” It is exciting now to see NHL 15 detailed on the new consoles, and it is a lot of fun to play, but handcuffed is the operative word here, and this game is not only handcuffed, it is hogtied in the back seat of a cop car.
NHL 15 is like the 50th place finisher in the Miss America pageant. It’s beautiful, no doubt, but there’s a lot missing inside, and it completely botched the talent competition. The developers of NHL 15 stripped the hell out this game, taking out many different modes that the hardcore fans of the franchise could not stand to lose. Minor league hockey? Gone! Season Mode? Disappeared! Online team play? Missing! These coupled with a long list of other omissions greatly alienate the traditional fan base that loves this franchise and can’t wait to lace up their virtual skates every year. NHL 15 decided to bank heavily on the overall presentation of a hockey game, and in that aspect, it doesn’t fully disappoint, it just hopes you don’t catch it without makeup in the dressing room.
The actual games are a lot of fun, and you get immersed into the NHL with severely upgraded physics, crowd details and the inclusion of the NBC telecast crew that brings a match up to a level that I’ve never experienced. There are a few hiccups here though too, as the announcers get repetitive quickly, and the procedural aspects of a game get buggy at times with awkward animations and questionable scoring. NHL 15 has some fantastic things going for it, but it seems as if it was taken out of the oven way too early.
Someone picking up a hockey video game for the first time will not notice that NHL 15 is lacking in many of the things that made the franchise famous. Maybe that was EA’s tactic, introducing a new next-gen audience to a game that looks and sounds like the real deal, and resting on the hopes that a disappointed fan base will rally back with a more fleshed out NHL 16 that brings back all of the nuances that the hardcore hockey fan wants and needs. When you don’t have any competition, I guess you can afford to do that, but that means that you leave the 2015 hockey video game fan alone out on the ice.