NHL 15 Available Now for PS4 and Xbox One - Post Your Impressions Here

[Drakar]

This games needs 6 vs 6 OTP really bad. The physics is actually pretty decent. its everything else that false apart.

[bigwill33]

Quote: Originally Posted by gopher_guy

Sure, the AI is going to break down from time to time. This is nothing new. Happens in every sports game.

Time to time? This happens all of the time. And it has been happening on the regular in the NHL series every year since Littman has been off of head producer.

The only way this game can even beat me now is when the AI takes advantage of its own mess and abuses the other cpu players like in front of the net for the easy goal.

Otherwise, this is the 4th year in a row that I turned on the game and was easily scoring 4-5 goals out of the box on advanced levels. Last year in club alone I was averaging 3.2 points per game during the first week of games. That was on a supposed "new" game. My OTP stats after nearly 1000 games were pushing 6pts per game. They change nothing, they fix nothing. In fact they create new problems more than they address the old ones.

We played connected GM with 12 users last year and I played ever single game. My record was 78-4 on superstar with sliders heavily in favor of the CPU because we are very good at the game. I didn't lose to the CPU once and even had one player with 100 goals, Grabner would just fly down the left wing side with nobody to ever stop him from an easy entrance into the zone. You could stall and then step on the speed again once in the zone and easy short-side goal every time on the CPU goalie. Awful! No reason to even try to do other things, even though I have dozens of ways to easily score when I need a goal.

I've lost one game in 2015 so far, in OT. It is exactly the same bs. And I impose things to handicap myself against the CPU when I play offline by myself. I always bring the puck in the zone and set up a real offense. I never push the transition play when I don't have the rush numbers. And from game number one on NHL 2015 I have easily dominated time on attack by a 3-1 margin. Shots on goal by a 7-1 margin at times. Why? Because it is the same damn game and it is not good overall. Fix it, EA!

[Drakar]

Quote: Originally Posted by bigwill33

Time to time? This happens all of the time. And it has been happening on the regular in the NHL series every year since Littman has been off of head producer. The only way this game can even beat me now is when the AI takes advantage of its own mess and abuses the other cpu players like in front of the net for the easy goal. Otherwise, this is the 4th year in a row that I turned on the game and was easily scoring 4-5 goals out of the box on advanced levels. Last year in club alone I was averaging 3.2 points per game during the first week of games. That was on a supposed "new" game. My OTP stats after nearly 1000 games were pushing 6pts per game. They change nothing, they fix nothing. In fact they create new problems more than they address the old ones. We played connected GM with 12 users last year and I played ever single game. My record was 78-4 on superstar with sliders heavily in favor of the CPU because we are very good at the game. I didn't lose to the CPU once and even had one player with 100 goals, Grabner would just fly down the left wing side with nobody to ever stop him from an easy entrance into the zone. You could stall and then step on the speed again once in the zone and easy short-side goal every time on the CPU goalie. Awful! No reason to even try to do other things, even though I have dozens of ways to easily score when I need a goal. I've lost one game in 2015 so far, in OT. It is exactly the same bs. And I impose things to handicap myself against the CPU when I play offline by myself. I always bring the puck in the zone and set up a real offense. I never push the transition play when I don't have the rush numbers. And from game number one on NHL 2015 I have easily dominated time on attack by a 3-1 margin. Shots on goal by a 7-1 margin at times. Why? Because it is the same damn game and it is not good overall. Fix it, EA!

I don't mind dominating or losing. It how about the CPU AI goes about its business that bothers me and how my own CPU AI Teammate don't react or play the same as the opposite CPU AI.

[ThreeKing]

Quote: Originally Posted by MichaelAngeloTMNT

If you're a fan of Hockey or the NHL, buy this game. Don't punish yourself because the things that were left out. The gameplay is incredible, prb would have game of the year all of the Modes were put in. Buy the game, play it for a few months and then trade it in. Worth trying just for the gameplay.

Totally agreed. Gameplay feels pretty organic and so damn fun for a first year title. Can't put it down.

If they come strong with their patches, and there's obviously a lot of fixes to be made, then this game deserves its respect.

[jake19ny]

I have a theory on fixing the defense problem but if I'm right I'm afraid to see what I lose from the game as a result. Back in the good old computer days of the NHL series when guys could mod the crap out of it, someone came out with the Total Control Editor. Similar to NHL view this allowed us to tweak sliders with number values and it even opened some AI not available for tweaking in the game itself. Well back then it was determined by the creator of that fine application and agreed upon by the community after trial and error, that if you up the Aggression of players one of the downfalls was CPU teammates skating around out of position chasing the puck carrier. Now I have not seen this to be the case in the past NHL releases on the PS3/Xbox 360 and upping the Aggression seemed to make the game better, however with NHL 15 I immediately put the Aggression up to 5 and of course I am having the problem we are all having. I upped it to max and forget it guys were all over the place and it was the highest scoring game I played yet. Last game I moved it back to the middle and saw much better coverage (not perfect) in front of the net. It was only one game so I have to try a few more. Anyone else try this or notice this?

[jyoung]

Quote:

The game has been tweaked into a arcade game with some real puck physics.

This sums up my initial impressions as well. The puck physics really are phenomenal on PS4. Watch how this wrister goes from being completely flat during the shot to spinning all over the place after the save, which Brière then slaps into the net out of mid-air:

Quote: Originally Posted by bigwill33

And some of it is a result of their removing the player "tie-ups" in front of the net. But thank god they did that because that was the most ridiculous excuse of a feature ever. It was just suction and was unrealistic. In real life it would be called holding or interference if it occurred anyway. But rather than work with it or improve it they just canned it and didn't replace it with anyway to defend the net front. Wonderful!

I didn't notice it until you mentioned that, but it does seem like they've taken those "tractor beam" tie up animations out of the game for PS4. I'll have to start watching more carefully to see if I can spot it happening.

The AI's lack of awareness for the puck seems to be the biggest problem. They just don't track it very well when a pass comes into the slot/crease.

Then you add that to the fact that sticks and limbs can still clip through everything on the ice when catching passes and taking shots, and you end up with goofy goals like this that should never happen when the defender is in such good position:

[bigwill33]

Quote: Originally Posted by jyoung

This sums up my initial impressions as well. The puck physics really are phenomenal on PS4. Watch how this wrister goes from being completely flat during the shot to spinning all over the place after the save, which Brière then slaps into the net out of mid-air:

That first video is beautiful and the second is just plain awful. And for every beautiful thing you see in this game you often see 5 awful. And after seeing the same awful things for 5 years in a row it really wears on you. The people that are new to the series may not see it and I hate to point it out for them, but this stuff needs to be addressed and pointed out. Because otherwise we are going to be suffering with broken aspects of this game for another 5 years at least.

[jake19ny]

Here's another winner....In one of my BeaGM seasons I'm 3-0-1 and when I played my next game during the face off Ray Ferraro said. "The New York Rangers have been busy filling holes" (I signed or moved nobody) "when the close one up another one opens and that's why there record is .500 now".....couple that with no stats its a joke. I mean come on they stroke us off all they want about not being able to get the modes in but these little things are just makes it look like they really didn't care much at all about the product they put out.