EA Canada has implemented a few changes to the physics layer found in its NHL series.

One thing that has always annoyed me about sports games is feature creep. As something of a purist--and as a guy whose first sports gaming experiences involved the LED bleeps and bloops of Coleco handhelds like Electronic Quarterback--I've never needed a lot of frills. Get the sport itself right on the field, or the ice, or whatever. Then we can talk about collecting players like sports cards, or bobblehead modes of play, or whatever. Less really can be more.

EA Canada has implemented a few changes to the physics layer found in its NHL series. Now each player and the puck have physics applied to them while on the ice. This allows for things like multi-player pile ups in front of the net, which didn't occur realistically in previous games cheap nhl 15 coins on Xbox 360 and PS3. Each player also has a trio of physics layers applied to them individually: their body, their equipment and their sweater. What this means is that players crash into each other with more force than before, and that a puck can change directions if it comes into contact with the fabric of a jersey or part of the equipment.

NHL’s biggest shortcoming, however, is that it abandons modes that many fans have come to love while keeping one that earns extra revenue for EA. GM Connected, an online franchise mode that allows hundreds of individuals to play together in a common universe--or even just a couple of friends who love to be in the same league--has been eliminated. EASHL, the online team-up mode that spawned entire communities of tens of thousands of fans, is gone. These are not ‘extras’ that only the hardest of hardcore fans look for; they are basic, fundamental features that NHL games have offered for multiple seasons. Meanwhile, Hockey Ultimate Team, a revenue-generating mode that lets you buy (with real money or earned in-game currency) virtual player cards and assemble a fantasy team to take on others online, is present and accounted for.

My experience with NHL 15 Ultimate Team coins was very different but no less entertaining for a time. I was amazed at EA Sports’ attention to detail. From the animation of one visiting fan cheering as the home crowd boos to the sheen of the ice after it’s been freshly Zambonied, NHL 15 is all about the realism.

All in all, NHL 15 is a solid experience that should whet the appetite of hockey enthusiasts with its attention to detail and realism but it provides too little content to keep casual players hooked.

NHL 15: The camera change does an excellent job accentuating the experience of being a single person who needs to contribute to the team’s effort to produce a victory.

NHL 15's equally archaic "rock-paper-scissors" face-off system continues to employ the same tiny selection of predetermined win/lose animations. Some moves like the stick lift actually put the winning centerman's team at a disadvantage, due to how slow the animations are and how unrealistically quick the defense can explode out of their stances to intercept the NHL 15 Ultimate Team Coins or poke it free from the recipient. Face-off participants still cannot get ejected from the circle for drawing early, despite the fact that this rule is enforced at all levels of professional hockey.

Likewise, using real video imagery of Doc and Eddie against fake, in-game footage was jarring. It was cool to hear that music, see the same scoreboard graphics, and witness the intros to each city, with helicopter shots of the arenas, skylines, and other geography. But slow-mo recaps of goals and other memorable moments are ruined by sharp edits between scenes that have the action stop for split seconds at a time. The most awkward recaps of them all are for fights, when you see that gloves are dropped by both players in literally one or two frames. These scenes in particular look so weird and unrealistic.

Such cuts speak to the tyranny of the annual sports game development cycle. If cheap NHL 15 coins had been practically any other game, it would have been pushed back into 2015. But after what happened with NBA Live back in 2010, any kind of delay is basically a death sentence, and EA Canada knows it. Unfortunately, the alternative in this case is a half-finished game. I can't fault NHL 15's developers for focusing on getting the gameplay up to speed, but neither can I ignore the sheer amount of content that has been cut from this version. EA has announced extensive post-launch support for NHL 15, including the restoration of Online Team Play and the addition of a draft mode for Be a GM, which is a nice gesture.

Let’s get the bad out of the way first as I’m sure many of you have heard already that NHL 15 lacks in features. Upon starting up the game for myself, I initially had a head scratching moment as well. When looking at the menu screen for the first time, there’s only three tabs which right away signaled that there was stuff missing from NHL 15 coins for sell. Upon surfing through the menus, I spent a few minutes just searching for the Season Mode as that’s where I normally start with sports games to review them. Well, there isn’t one in NHL 15, not exactly, but we’ll get to that in a second. Other modes like Winter Classic, Online Team Player, GM Connected and more features are gone. Why? Well, only EA knows that.

Where “Be a Pro” stands out is in the actual gameplay. When gamers take the ice in the “Be a Pro” mode, the camera shifts from the standard top down view of the players, to a dynamic third person camera that circles and surrounds the character. The camera change does an excellent job accentuating the experience of being a single person who needs to contribute to the team’s effort to produce a victory.