NHL 15 is powered by EA’s Ignite engine, which is used in all of the publisher’s other sports titles, and makes this year’s version look ridiculously realistic. All of the player’s models are highly detailed, so much so a quick glance of them on-screen will trick you into thinking they’re the real thing. The only thing that breaks the illusion is, aside from your holding a controller, is the stiff, sometimes buggy animations that momentarily overrun a player. Still, with the addition of NBC’s sports broadcast graphics clogging up the screen, and commentary provided by real-world folks, Mike Emrick and Ed Olczyk, I often felt like I was watching a telecast of an actual NHL game rather than playing one in a video game; Though Emrick and Olczyk’s commentary began to wear thin after I heard the same sound bites a little too often.
After not releasing on next-gen consoles last year, EA’s popular virtual hockey franchise is finally coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 with NHL 15, although many of the franchise’s popular features will be missing, particularly GM Connected mode and Online Team Play. It seems in many ways NHL 15 has become a rebuilding year for the franchise, at least as far as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game are concerned. While growing pains are often expected when a game makes the jump to new consoles, after two years of development, many fans of EA’s NHL series expected much more out of NHL 15. During a recent NHL 15 press event, featuring a motion capture demo performed by Max Pacioretty from the Montreal Canadiens and Morgan Reilly from the Toronto Maple Leafs, NHL 15 producer Sean Ramjagsingh explained why many of NHL 14’s popular features didn’t make it into NHL 15.
That's by far the biggest offender when it comes to physics, though those new puck physics aren't entirely without issue either. By and large, the movements of the puck on the ice look correct. There is a proper weight and momentum to how it slides around, but for some reason, that properness doesn't always extend to goals scored. Apart from the usual issue of goals shot to the high corners of the net working incredibly often, a lot of the goals I ended up scoring throughout my time in NHL looked absolutely terrible. And I don't mean the kind of junky, off-a-rebound goals that are entirely correct for a real NHL game. I mean strange, unrealistic bounces and apparent saves turned into glitchy-looking scores. It's not all this way, of course. You can still set up beautiful-looking multi-pass plays, terrific one-timers, and the like. But those good moments come with a comparable number of bad ones.
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Right away, the fact that a ton of money was spent on NHL 15‘s presentation overhaul is made apparent. The NBC stuff is one thing, but the arenas and their crowds have also received noteworthy makeovers. In fact, EA says that there are now 9,000 individual crowd models in each arena’s stands, although that staggering fact doesn’t eliminate repeats. I swear, I kept seeing the same woman and her blonde bob over and over again. Still, the new crowd members are pretty impressive, and certainly do come in many different varieties. You’ll see the proud away team fans, the horny puck bunnies who want to marry a superstar, and even the super fans who don’t care what others think of them. They’ll show up in full dress, wearing jerseys, make-up and other gimmicks, like goal light hats or wigs.
On defense, however, things get a little frustrating. Your teammates suffer from some remarkably dopey AI. Too often they ignore the defensive liabilities to which they have been assigned. If I chose to pressure the puck carrier in the defensive zone, I would generally witness my teammates allow an attacker to enjoy a leisurely skate to the front of the crease where he would remain unnoticed until he scored a goal. To combat this, I would let the computer pressure the puck carrier while I cleaned out the slot. But rather than stop the score, my AI defender would lay off the puck carrier who would send the puck to someone else my teammates were ignoring with a goal following shortly thereafter. Were Xbox One controllers not so expensive, I may have thrown mine a time or two. Thankfully, the in-game AI options helped me put a little pep in my teammates’ skates.
The mode I use most frequently, Be A GM, has had some disappointing setbacks of its own. Most notable, in-depth simulation is gone. If you want to simulate a game, the game does it in the background. In previous editions, you could watch the scoring during the sim and join the game at any point if you wanted to try to turn your team’s fortunes around. Presumably that will return at some point down the road, but probably not this year.
