NHL 15 Announced

It's that time of the year again when teasers are released for upcoming sports games and now it's NHL 15's turn. Promising a slew of new features and basically a complete rebuild like they do on every generation it is apparent how much has been completely redone. First I'll discuss the trailer and then go onto the site listed features and discuss the cover vote below. So from what I noticed in the trailer was that there is a definite focus on the more refined and smaller things of hockey. From the net cam to a more detailed bench style and even beautifully designed arenas. Now trailers usually make the sports games look better than they are, but damn those graphics that are in-game seem to be really sharp. On the site it goes the label off a huge amount of changes with really interesting photographic points. The new 12 players physics collision system is detailed along with the creation of a real physics based puck which hasen't been done in the past for some reason. So I would expect that thing to hop around a bit more natural this time and hopefully hits to be more realistic. Now this will be helped by their three build system focusing on; body, equipment and jersey which are what your typical hockey player is made of. They have also added dynamic equipment including real fabric which should make interactions a lot less static. It'll be awesome to see the fabric ripple with acceleration just like in a real game. There's also the addition of the 9,000 individual crowd models (with 4x the animations) for people that live like a real crowd which is boasted to be the highest of any other sports game at this point having 19,000 + seats. I really do hope they are live as that is a huge part of any sport and really helps put you more into the action, especially hockey. AI is supposed to be smarter which is another big one as they are typically quite unlike real hockey players and hope this is a pickup in that aspect. We also finally have some new announcer talent with Mike 'Doc' Emrick and Eddie Olczyk doing the overhead with on-ice from TSN's analyst Ray Ferraro (hurray!). We also have some NBC branded game day presentation which as a Canadian I go yuck. It is sort've our sport so I thought it might be more appropriate to cater to us a little more, just saying. More details will be written as they come and NHL 15 is set for Xbox One, Xbox 360, Playstation 4 and Playstation 3.

NHL 15 Announcement Trailer

Like past years we have been given the chance as fans to vote for whom will grace the cover of the 2015 entry into the series. This year eight players have been chosen for cover vote and I'll list those below in a second, though will go over contest details. So you can vote on their site and on twitter with hastags for double the votes, voting ends June 1, 2014.

NHL 15 Voting Schedule:
• Quarterfinals: May 5th – May 18th, 2014.
• Semi-Finals: May 19th – May 25th, 2014.
• Finals: May 26th – June 1st, 2014.

Player Hashtags:
• Erik Karlsson - #NHL15Karlsson
• Logan Couture - #NHL15Couture
• T.J Oshie - #NHL15Oshie
• P.K Subban - #NHL15Subban
• Drew Doughty - #NHL15Doughty
• Phil Kessel - #NHL15Kessel
• Matt Duchene - #NHL15Duchene
• Patrice Bergeron - #NHL15Bergeron


NHL 15 Cover Vote Page