Hockey is my favorite sport. I played year-round throughout my childhood, and I watch it religiously (go Islanders!). One of the reasons I love hockey so much is because it's fast, strategic, and dynamic on so many different levels. The good news is that NHL 15 understands this. It's fun to play on a moment-to-moment level, and it's accessible to anyone that can hold a controller; should you want to delve into its finer points, there are complex techniques like poke checking, throwing your body around, and winning battles in the corners.

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The bad news is that on a big-picture level, NHL 15 foregoes and forgets much of the minutia that hardcore hockey fans really care about. For as solidly as it plays, some of the series' most important hooks - some of which inspired me to cheer it on in past years - have completely disappeared. On the ice, NHL 15 shines. But everything around it feels a tad bit empty.EA's NHL series typically totes strong gameplay, and it's as impressive as ever in NHL 15. Better yet, it's highly customizable. Camera angles can be altered, pre-determined difficulty settings can be tinkered with, and you can even set how arcadey or simulation-like you want the overall experience to be. Hate icing? Shut it off. Going offside the bane of your existence? Eliminate it completely. You can even determine how often a fight happens, the likelihood of a player breaking his stick, or whether you want to deal with injuries. And of course, you can pick your control style. It's cool that you can make something as meaningless as an exhibition game with your friend all your own by editing so many different facets, even if many of these options aren't exactly new.Speaking of modes, NHL 15 is noticeably lighter than old-gen iterations on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (and, in fact, the old-gen version of NHL 15, which is a clone of last year's), and this is where the overall package begins to diminish. Online Team Play is gone, as is EA Sports Hockey League, which were two community lynchpins. You can still play single ranked or unranked games online -- everything goes very smoothly when connected, with reasonable load times and no noticeable lag -- and you can bring your Ultimate Team online, too. Hockey Ultimate Team is still enjoyable in its own right, with the ability to create unique squads with a hodgepodge of players from different teams, leagues, and skill levels. It might just be NHL 15's meatiest and most substantial option.As a single-player-centric gamer myself, I've always gravitated towards offline modes, which is where the lack of content really started to sink in. NHL 15 doesn't even have a Season Mode, which was originally introduced in the Super Nintendo and SEGA Genesis era. To play a season, I had to actually jump into Be A GM Mode... only to find that it’s been stripped of some of its own features, including basic online functionality. Be A GM Mode is actually awesome; I've enjoyed it in years past and it's always made me want a fully fleshed-out NHL game where you're a general manager. But it's really unfortunate that you have to extract Season Mode out of it instead of keeping them separate. I'm confused why I can't play a single season as a team of my choice without having to jump through hoops. It's 2014, not 1994.Be A Pro mode has also taken multiple hits. You can no longer be drafted by an organization and work your way up through the ranks from lesser, ancillary leagues and into the pros. Now, you're drafted by an organization and you immediately -- and mysteriously -- make the team. I created a pro that was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens. As I played, I was as confused as to why I couldn't skip forward to my next shift automatically as I was confused by how I -- a young rookie on the periphery of the roster -- could just jump on the ice whenever I wanted. Be A Pro still has deep customization options, but it also felt hollow and half-baked.With all of that said, EA Sports has certainly created a pretty game, to the point where multiple people in the IGN office told me that from afar, they thought I was watching a real hockey game for a moment. Naturally, NHL 15 still suffers from some awkward animations and occasional glitchiness, but I was impressed by the relatively lifelike player faces and the flow of their sweaters. There are lots of little touches, from a center approaching the circle while looking behind him and chattering with his defensemen, to goal celebrations like jumping into the glass in the corner as teammates crowd around. Slow-mo replays of awesome goals are heightened by the realistic craziness of the crowd behind the glass. The crowd’s a bit more awkward at full speed, though. The camera often cuts to identical fans executing identical animations, and I've never seen so many ****-talking away-team fans in real life as I saw in NHL 15. I'm pretty sure a Senators fan wouldn't make it out of Toronto alive if he was taunting the home crowd like that.EA Sports has also nailed the sounds of hockey; the slash of a skate on fresh ice, the bounce of a puck into the boards, the collision of rubber on the crossbar. When I think about playing hockey, I think about the smell of the locker room, the sound of the Zamboni laying a fresh sheet down, and all of those aforementioned noises of the game. I'm so pleased that the telltale audio cues of hockey were captured so realistically, even if the crowd noise itself leaves something to be desired.I also mostly enjoyed NHL 15's integration with NBC's hockey telecast. First of all, I'm a huge, huge fan of Doc Emrick. I think he's the best in the business. So hearing him, alongside Eddie Olczyk and "Chicken Parm" Ray Ferraro is a real treat. Still, Doc’s delivery feels a bit stilted. There are none of his quintessential freak-out moments, and his famously vast vocabulary isn't utilized well. Olczyk throws in a few memorable lines, but Ferraro's lines seem rushed. They also collectively seem off the mark fairly often. Doc will announce that a perfect pass just occurred as I threw a puck into traffic in the slot, losing it to an aggressive defenseman. A goalie can be scrambling in the crease, making multiple acrobatic saves, as Doc notes that those saves were "easy." Ferraro in particular seems off-kilter; he made comments multiple times during Be A GM Mode games that made it seem like I was in the 50th game of the season, not the 3rd. Little things like this are minor, but they can be grating if you're looking for immersion and realism.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.