NHL 15 - The reveal all of you (just me) have been waiting for!

Demo is out. Graphics are great, but blacks look slightly bright to me. New presentation is very good. Gameplay is very similar. Ai seems to be pretty bad still. The tweaks to the skill stick are dekes are minor, but good. The new dynamic cameras are good.

Pixel counting this one might be interesting. The image looks a little soft. Some up-close highlights the AA looks very good. Other cameras I can see a bit of line crawling. Curious to know if the AA switches between camera views and if it's full 1080p on Xbox One. FIFA looks a lot sharper by comparison.

Overall, could turn out to be good, but it's missing the only game mode I would play.


Edit:
There are people complaining about framerate on both platforms. It definitely seemed like it wasn't 60fps. Seemed like a 30fps game. Not sure I noticed any frame drops during gameplay ... Unless it's supposed to be 60fps, in which case it doesn't feel like it.
 
The more realistic and better the graphics and everything around is, the more fake it seems. I guess its the uncanny valley effect.
For me its the movements, the way an animation continues even if its not the right one etc. Watching that, the game seems so choppy and none fluid, due to the animation not always fitting correctly.
Same thing with Fifa14 for me...
 
I don't know. There are far more gameplay animations in these sports games than any other game, and I think they do a pretty good job of it. It's a pretty impressive achievement on its own. I am a bit disappointment that a lot of the animations (other than some dekes) do not look to have been updated yet again. They've been the same for a number of years now. There is definitely room for improvement, but overall the game is is pretty smooth and responsive for have so many different animations.
 
I don't really give two shits about the missing modes, but the fact that the FPS is reportedly not solid is a real bummer.

It sounds like they have their priorities straight anyways, the last thing I would've wanted was for them to force all the modes in, and end up with a buggy game or underwhelming visuals.

Maybe it's the programmer in me, but I appreciate cutting features for the sake of the whole. In this situation, throwing more bodies at the problem would probably have not helped all that much. They could have started earlier though, claiming they had only 12mths is kinda BS.
 
The missing game modes is a tough call. There are a ton of them, so I can understand losing some, but it sounds like the ones that are in have been stripped down as well. It's a bit of a tough sell, especially when NHL15 on the PS360 has all of the game modes and features.
 
I've started the demo download, was available over here. Will give it a shot (lol).
 
I've started the demo download, was available over here. Will give it a shot (lol).

Curious to hear your impressions as someone new to the series. I have a feeling you may find it difficult, and the controls may seem unintuitive. I've obviously played every game in the series and adapted to the controls one step at a time. Something as simple as managing the way your player is facing by skating forwards or backwards with the left trigger at the correct time might be difficult now that the players carry a lot of momentum and can't turn on a dime depending on how fast they're going.
 
What is the verdict on the game then?

I played the demo and rather liked it but I haven't played an NHL game since the Genesis days.
 
From people I know who have it, the base gameplay is very good. It just depends which game modes from the series you are interested in as a lot of them are missing from the Xbox One/PS4 version.
 
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