EA manages to secure its place as the best source for virtual hockey, especially given its exclusive use of the license.

NHL 15 recreates the feeling of being at a live game quite well. From licensed arenas to impressively detailed crowd modelings, there's little that's been left out from the experience of attending an NHL game. These details combine for some remarkable true-to-life instant replays, all complementing the complete NBC Sports presentation.

NHL 15 Ultimate Team coins introduce 12-player collision physics, which means the game calculates nonessential player collisions out of the play or even offscreen. Computer controlled players are now vulnerable to the elements because they're constantly being simulated in real time. This works for and against the general semblance of realism. There's nothing better than seeing two players knock into each other, only to open the perfect lane for a fast-break to the net. But there's also a decent amount of goofiness too, where players seem to stumble for no reason. In the end it all makes for a handful of questionable plays -- sequences that would likely merit a penalty call in reality -- but nevertheless go undisciplined.

Right away the power of the new consoles comes to the forefront. The increase in graphical quality is immediately noticeable on multiple levels. EA made a point of making the game look even better and as close to the real thing as possible, re-working many different aspects of how it all looks.

Take Be a GM mode for example. If I'm entering a mode where I am tasked with running an NHL 15 coins franchise, there are things I expect to control. Drafting players, consulting the AHL affiliate team for who is ready to come up, and more were all part of the fun in NHL 14, but NHL 15's GM mode loses all of them. The draft is CPU-automated, the up-and-coming players are merely waiting to come up, and I'm basically a figurehead, not a GM. I want to run a team, EA Sports, and you took some of the best parts about running a team away from me while assigning others to the A.I. What if I don't want the player the CPU drafts for me? What then?

Interestingly, cheap NHL 15 coins are missing a few things when playing a match. Pull off a miraculous hat trick, for example, and you get no hats flying in from the crowd. This also includes home wins in Detroit, where no cephalopods get hurled. The naming of the three stars at the end of each game is also omitted, something that seems odd considering how easy it would be to implement. It is coming in a patch, though.

Perhaps that’s why EA Sports’ NHL 15 feels so less-than in comparison to the publisher’s other annual sports sims. It’s a shame, really. The PlayStation 4/Xbox One version of the game – the first to be built using EA’s current-gen technology – is the strongest the series has been in years in terms of presentation and raw playability. But the treasure trove of features that defines so many EA Sports titles is dialed down here, to the point that NHL 15 might as well be a reboot.

And then there's NHL 15, a next-gen sports game that falls strangely short. Somehow it's been almost completely stripped down, robbed of the key features that made its predecessors so strong. The on-ice hockey game is solid, sure, but how long will you play that when the rest of the game's modes are totally lackluster?