NHL 20 ONLINE FRANCHISE SERIES

Think of franchise mode like a complex interstate freeway system you need cars to drive on a freeway, but at times the NHL series makes me feel like I’m riding a bike in the middle lane of an expressway. While franchise needs more depth, the ways in which it is navigated need to be simplified. The arrangement of menus is very cumbersome and uninviting. If Connected GM is ever to become a thing again (see below), these need to be cleaned up. Not pictured: The other 6 goals he scored that you could see a glitchy mile away. Note that this was a defenseman on a breakaway. Granted, this was an online vs game, but you can see the usual deke here being done by my opponent. Little details are done right in areas such as running a ticket sales drive for the next season at the end or the current season What Needs Work in Franchise Mode

I may be wrong, but I don’t recall secondary positions being in the game before? I liked seeing a player listed as a LF/C, for instance. Wings are a conservative seller, Ducks are a conservative buyer. It’s fairly easy to automate things, and I like the new help prompts that can help a newbie to franchise get acquainted. Menus like these can help newbies to franchise get better acquainted. It’s odd though that they are auto-hired to your team, and doubly-odd to have their contract expires 3 days later. Retired players being reintroduced as scouts is a great addition. It’s fun and interesting to just peruse through the history of the NHL, and I was happy to see that in my quick sim, no records were magically being broken due to the sim engine. I really Like the inclusion of the record book. You also still have to manually create all of your trades against a clock.

The knocks are that there is no way to pause, speed up, or exit the process once started, nor is there any mention of how many hours it runs for. I’m leaving it in the Good section because it’s enhancements like this that we should be consistently seeing in abundance year-after-year in all sports games. It’s a very innovative, new addition to the NHL series, but it’s not perfect. It’s actually very similar to the final day of signings in FIFA (you can tell it was built upon similar code).

The new Trade Deadline feature is really awesome. My first impression of NHL 21 is that it is a lot like NHL 20, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it is also understandable with all that’s going on with next-gen development and the Coronavirus impacting work lives. It’s been one of my favorite games, and a game that I’ve consistently have said needs more recognition, especially with its franchise mode details. I have really enjoyed the NHL series a great deal since probably around NHL 16 or 17. Why lay all of that information out at the start of a review? Well, because it’s fair to establish a baseline for a review with a game like NHL or another AAA title, and it’s not the same as reviewing a smaller game from a smaller studio with less resources, for instance Doug Flutie Maximum Football. That’s understandable since FIFA has more of an international appeal than perhaps any sports game in the world. When perusing a list such as the one here, it’s easy to see that NHL has a claim to that 4th spot, but is likely still behind the FIFA series. Let’s start by asking a simple question: Does the NHL series fall into the Big 4 of sports games titles? Madden, MLB The Show, and NBA 2K are all AAA titles that sold millions and millions of copies over the years. This review is heavily focused on franchise mode, so if you’re someone who enjoys franchise mode but is still on the fence about NHL 21, this is the review for you. Therefore, this review is not focused on gameplay or new game modes. This is a post-release review for NHL 21, so most likely you’ve made up your mind about a lot of things regarding this game.

Nhl 20 online franchise