And with NHL 19, that proves most fruitful with the World of Chel, a hub where new, casual, and seasoned players can leave behind the Franchise Modes, Training walkthroughs, and Season-long simulations - all of which have been further expanded for players determined to micro-manage - in the name of weird, wacky fun. But it's a credit to the developers that they busy themselves, year in, year out, to make some kind of visible improvement, innovation, or unexpected twist. The NHL team has been serving hamburgers to repeat customers every week for the past decade, so by this point, asking if their customers "notice anything different?" about the recipe is going to get a predictable range of responses.įor some studios, that would be (and has been) taken as permission to lag behind, stall, and cease innovating when none is demanded - with NHL 19 the only simulation hockey title around, they could get away with it more than some. And without an identifiable tech limitation or boundary being bumped against, players don't know what to demand. Again, that's not an indictment of the developers, merely the side effect of their past success: it's hard to know what part of the game's physics can be improved without fundamentally changing the nature of the simulation. But if the RPM has affected any part of the play, we couldn't spot it. This year, it's the RPM - the Real Player Motion Technology - that is being touted as the next evolutionary step in player skating, bodychecking, and collision physics. And ever since NHL 15 made the jump to next-gen consoles, with advanced game physics handed over to the EA Ignite Engine, the developers have continued to improve the game on a technical level - as most players would be hard-pressed to identify what, if anything, feels different, let alone improved.
Where series like Madden, FIFA, or NBA Live struggled with the fact that console technology couldn't replicate a true experience, the NHL series, perhaps sooner than any other, used the technology on hand to create a quality simulation not by replicating the real physics, but by. If anything, they took their simulation of the game of hockey too seriously, too early. That isn't to say that the developers at EA Vancouver fail to deliver the same polished, satisfying product out of the package.
Related: Read Screen Rant's NBA Live 19 Review Who said a sports simulation should be taken seriously, anyway? The good news? While past releases have raised the question posed to all annual sports titles - are the improvements truly deserving of a full-priced gamed? - NHL 19 has made measurable improvements, putting more tools and customization into the players' hands, and included new, surprising game modes apparently designed for one reason: fun.
have come to expect, if not accept that reality. Players will encounter some frustrating and head-scratching decisions on the developers' part, but. NHL 19 doesn't reinvent the wheel, because it no longer needs to. As another season of NHL Hockey approaches, another installment of EA's NHL series arrives to continue what must unequivocally be one of the strangest developer-player dynamics in simulation sports.