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NHL EHM has gone gold, and as a result the Gold demo has also slipped onto the internet, so it's time to actually pen down some thoughts and reactions to what will be the final version. This is a review of the game not as an average gamer, but as someone who has played the original freeware version of EHM to death, is in 2 online EHM leagues, and frequents both the SI and FHockey forums for EHM. Bear this in mind while reading: if you're not a fan of sports management sims you might end up lost.
Let's get started.
NHL EHM is based *heavily* on SI's Championship Manager engine and interface. What this means is that NHL EHM will look and feel familiar to anyone who has played a CM game in the past. So it's no coincidence that they seem similar.
LEAGUES, PLAYERS, DATABASES GALORE
It's exciting to realize how many real players, leagues, and teams are included in this game. It boasts something like 15 "playable" leagues. This means that you can take control of any team in these leagues and lead them to success (or failure). Want to take over a team in the NHL? You can? Or what about a team in the Swedish Elitiseren? Can-do. You can also take control of teams in Russia, Canadian juniors, or Slovakia just to name a few. The database of players and teams is quite impressive, and a tad overwhelming at times but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. If I'm the Calgary Flames and what to sign some journeyman from the Denmark Super Best League (yes that's a real league name), I can. The fact of why I would want to do this is irrelevant -- I can if I want to. And that's a good thing.
However, it's in the arena of players, leagues, and licenses that we run into the first hurdle that the game has trouble with.
While Canadian juniors and the NHL are included, the American Hockey League and East Coast Hockey League (the two big minor league affiliates of NHL clubs) are not. While not including the ECHL licensing is a tad dispapointing, it's not the end of the world. I doubt too many people will miss the Charlotte Checkers or the Florida Everblades. Of course American NCAA is not licensed either due to the NCAA's own paranoia, and while that completely sucks that's nobody's fault but the NCAA's for being a bunch of moronic imbeciles stuck back somewhere in the early 17th century. But I digress.
However, not including the AHL is an absolute shocker that floored me, and is the first of the things I consider to be major flaws. The AHL is *the* farm system for the NHL and it *HAS* to be licensed and included along with the NHL. There are no amount of overseas teams or leagues in the world that can make up for the lack of the AHL's presence, in my eyes. It's mind-boggling to think that SI was able to get the NHL license, but didn't push hard to get the AHL's. This is going to be a MAJOR turn-off for North American gamers, and is going to hamper NHL EHM's efforts to make a dent in the North American market.
It's also somewhat questionable to me to not include the AHL, ECHL, Swiss, and German leagues, but to include *two* British leagues. Hockey is way more-important and popular in any of these countries, and both of the British leagues are awfully low-level. This is one of those things I have to seriously question SI on since SI is based in the UK. Sorry guys, it wouldn't be an issue if the other leagues were there.
Once I was able to pick myself up off the floor after the realization that the AHL is not included, I have to admit everything kinda' falls apart from there. I'm playing as the Buffalo Sabres, but I can't send Ryan Miller to the Rochester Americans (instead I send him to a fake "Troy Rovers" team), and while AHL players under NHL contract appear on those teams, the ones under AHL-only contract don't, and that puts a serious crimp in realism and believability for those wanting to play with the NHL level.
As a summary on the leagues, I know I personally don't have any desire to play the European leagues. I'm not European, I dont' know what the teams and leagues are, and I'm not going to stumble through trying to learn them because I'm already preoccupied with NHL, AHL, ECHL, UHL, Canadian Juniors, and NCAA. I want the European leagues included of course, and it's fine if they *are* playable, but I find it a shame that they're playable and that there are plenty great North American ones that aren't.
THE INTERFACE
This interface is... less-than-intuitive. In fact, it's downright hostile in places. I won't go totally in-depth about it here because I get into it in some other places in this review.
One big dispapointment: right-click functionality is still missing from most of the game. So many tasks could be simplified by just enabling a right-click (such as in creating and removal players from trade proposals), but just like in the beta demo the right-click functionality is not present. This is a shame since every mouse nowadays has at least two mouse buttons, and it wouldn't take much to include the right-click functionality. A bit disappointment and one details where the ball was dropped.
Overall for the interface all you need to know is this -- for every button that is simple, intuitive, and belongs there, there seems to be another button hidden and buried, out of place, or just completely unnecessary. And it makes for a very awkward interface which oftentimes interrupts what you are trying to accomplish, as well as interrupting its immersiveness.
It's a big disappointment, especially considering how easy the freeware EHM was to use and navigate.
ROSTER, TACTICS, PROFILES
Moving along... as you begin your game as GM of the team of your choosing, you'll notice a lot of roster, lineup, and practice options are available. Not only do you create lines, dress certain players, etc, you can also assign your team to play a certain way like "Barrage" where you just pepper the opposing goalie with shots, or you can order your team to "Shoot Low" and try to beat the goalie's pads when they get a chance. You can even tell certain players whether it's ok for them to get into fights or not. This Lineup and Tactics portion of the game is very well-done and truly does bring something new and different to the table. Your team orders and tactics really have an effect on how your team plays, and it's not wise to ignore them.
I may be having a miserable time trying to get a puck past Martin Brodeur. However, if I tell my guys to shoot low I can start beating him a bit more. And these are tactics you tend to remember to beat certain goalies. A nice touch of realism. If you pull up a player profile and have scouted him or his team (which has its own issues I'll get into later), you can click on a button next to his picture and get a VERY well-done scouting report and assessment on the player. These scouting reports are GREAT to read, and much more-realistic and informative than the reports in the original freeware EHM. Better yet, the more you scout a player, the more socuting info shows up in the report. This again is realistic and a nice subtle touch.
It's here we also arrive at another problem though (and so far the most-controversial among EHM die-hards).
While looking through your player profiles, you'll notice that each catgeory or ability is ranked 1-20. While this is apparently normal for the CM series and other european games, that is not traditionally how players are ranked and categorized here in North America. Here in North America the standard tends to be 1-100, and even the original freeware EHM used this 1-100 ratings system for most players. While SI has stated that the underlying abilities are actually ranked 1-200, but are masked to only show 1-20, it's a questionable decision at best in my opinion, and yet another thing that will hurt its acceptance in a North American market. North Americans don't like players ratings 1-20, they like them 1-100, and the underlying actual ratings are irrelevant to this.
What this 1-20 system does is basically condense the numbers and make it look as though Alexei Zhitnik is comparable to Miroslav Satan, and that's just not the case at all. They're two totally different players with two different playing styles, who play two totally different positions (D and LW/RW respectively). It's completely silly to see things like this, and it's why if the profiles showed even an inaccurate 1-100 scale of their attributes it would be a bit more-believable and better than an accurate 1-20 scale.
There's also the issue that you can't list your team's attributes all together on one scrollable screen for easy comparison. You can Compare two specific players, but that's unweildly and I usually want to compare 4 or 5 to one another at the same time. Instead of getting all on one screen I have to Tab between different types of attributes and menus on my Roster screen. It's a shame, because a simple tab to List All Attributes with a scrollbar going to the right would have sufficed as a fix, but it's not present.
IN-GAME
If you Coach a game know this -- the Tactical View is quite boring and basically comparable to the original freeware's. You get scrolling Play-by-Play in the bottom of the window, with a mostly-empty rink in the middle and a scoreboard at the top.
The rink *does* actually show who's on the ice at any time (and at what positions) and this is an improvement over the beta demo where it showed nothing.
It's dispapointing that no true 2D view is available for games (like was initially mentioned) but I can understand the problems SI had implementing it, and it not being included is not the end of the world. It'll turn off some people, but it's not the big problem.
The big problem is that SI *really* should have included more than just the lines on the ice in this view when they knew they couldn't get the true 2D view working. For instance, there's no place on this screen that shows you Shots on Goal during the game. Why? I have to switch tabs to find this out? This info should be embedded into the scorebard at the top itself.
Also, why do I have to switch tabs to see the scoring summary? There's all this empty space along and around the rink in the middle, couldn't that have the scoring summary embedded into it? It makes no sense to make me switch tabs to find this basic info out and then have all this empty open space on this screen where the action is supposed to take place.
One thing the In-Game view DOES get right is the short charts and other stats. I can click on any goal in the Scoring Summary to see where everyone was one the ice at the time of the goal. I can click on the Shots Attempts to find out where on the ice shots are being generated from , and if I click on Shots on Goal I get to see where those shots are going in relation to the net. This is a HUGE help in finding who shoots where, when, and how good the goalie is at stopping shots aimed at certain areas of the net. Tie this info in with your Team Orders and you can do some real damage to an opponent with it. It's great.
In the end, even though the Tactical View is somewhat pointless and there's no true 2D view it's still worthwhile to "watch" the games from here because you get lots of good info on how your team and opponents play. And in a game like this knowledge equals power.
FINANCES, TRANSACTIONS, ETC...
NHL EHM's financial model is great. You can set currencies to US Dollars, Pounds, Danish Kroners, Swiss Francs, anything you can imagine (just like you can in CM).
When offering contracts to players, you not only offer a base salary and a signing bonus, as well as options like No Trade Clauses, Player Options, and Two-Way contracts (like in the freeware), you can also now offer incentive bonuses for milestones such as a bonus that kicks in if a player reaches 20 goals in a season. These details are truly fun to play around with, and add to the depth of the game. They also give you more options to convince a player to sign if he's playing hardball with you on it. The players themselves will sometimes request certain clauses or incentives as a guide of what they want.
The rest of the financial model seems solid too. I can click on Info and get information on my team's General Finances, Income, and Expenditures via 3 different pulldowns at any given time. While it's a bit excessive to put these on different tabs or pulldowns, they're there and it's not something you need to be checking daily in most cases. If I try to go over my set player budget, my team's Board will make life miserable on me financially and not let me go any further over, as well as make it difficult for me to resign players. I can find no real fault with the financial model here.
Transactions are a sore point though. In the freeware EHM you simply clicked on the Trade tab, selected the teams you wanted involved, went through the rosters and made your offers. In NHL EHM you have to wade through a merciless number of screens, menus, and tabs just to initialize a simple offer for one player. This is another of the more-inexcusable things in the interface. There's no reason to force people to open up the profile of every player they want to include just to add them to a trade offer. Once again, it slows things down considerably and takes away from the immersiveness and enjoyment. Basically, you're left not even wanting to try to make trades because they're too much of a pain to deal with.
The actual trade offers and goings-on are... mixed. Sometimes teams will repsond right away, other times they'll wait to put together a counter-offer first. This is realistic and actually adds a lot to the game itself. "Will they reply right away so we can get this done, or will they drag their feet on it?". However, just like in the beta demo I sometimes find myself accepting a team's counter-offer, only to have them reject it (which is stupid since they're the ones who suggested it). And there are also some issues with how the CPU weighs trade value for certain things, but these aren't huge issues and can be easily worked around. Nor do they totally ruin the game.
Finally, there's signing free agents. You have to click through *several* menus just to get to a search screen where you can get the option of sorting the players to find the free agents. Why can't UFA's and RFA's be accessed by a simple button on your Roster screen? Why do I have to jump through all these hoops to get to this screen? It's puzzling and there's really no reason or excuse for it.
All in all the Trade and signing systems work great and are in-depth, but are simply god-awful to navigate and yet again slow down the game and ruin the enjoyement. This needs to be fixed by the next edition of the game.
SCOUTING, DRAFTING, ETC
Scouting in NHL EHM is a chore. Much like Trades, you have to wade through a series of menus to find scouting buried in an area where you wouldn't expect it to be. It's a pain to find initially, and much like some other things should just have its own button available directly from the Roster screen.
A welcome addition is that now you can do more than just scout a specific team, country or shortlist. You can now also assign a scout to certain regions of the world, upcoming opposition, players eligible for the upcoming NHL Entry Draft, or just to scout Youth in general.
The scouting reports themselves are heaven. I love reading the player projections and breakdowns. They're more-fun to read than in the freeware EHM, and also give better info in some cases. Combining scouting reports with Staff reports on your own team results in very detailed accounts of what to expect from a player.
Overall the scouting is very well-done. The only gripe I have is how the option of selecting and sending scouts is buried under menus and submenus. If this gets addressed the scouting system will be ideal.
Both the NHL Waiverdraft and Entry Drafts are well-done. A full 9-round draft is availble for the Entry Draft, which is truly fun even though these guys after the 4th or 5th rounds will probably never even get close to making your NHL rosters. I admittedly haven't had a chance to see if a junior draft is actually implemented yet or not or how well it works, but I'm fairly confident it is, and I'm sure it's great.
OTHER FEATURES
The Media/Press Interaction in NHL EHM, much like with the CM series, is great. It's fun to defend a player's recent performance, or blast a guy who's not performing up to par. It's also a lot of fun to confirm or deny trade rumors and see what transpires. Sometimes a player will respond to you defending him by playing better, other times he'll just continue to slump. Sometimes fans won't like your defense of a certain player while the Board will, and other times everyone will just hate you no matter what. Do poorly enough and everyone from your team to the Board will lose confidence in you, which could result in you being fired.
You can request that your Board build you new facilities, increase your player budget, or even just be patient as you rebuild your team. These are great little touches which do have an impact on the game if you use them correctly.
You can also appeal to the League if you deem there was poor officiating in a game. This is a nice feature, but rather pointless since you can't see much of anything happening in a game "live", and your only tip-off would be a constant string of your players to the penalty box for minor infractions. It seems a bit out-of-place here.
You can also appeal to the league to postpone a game. I'm really puzzled as to why this is included or what its point is, since this is something that never happens in hockey. It seems to be a leftover from CM or something. Maybe this happens in soccer or something, but it doesn't in hockey where you play in a controlled environment inside an arena.
In preseason you can arrange an exhibition tournament or tour. I had the Washington Capitals host the "DC Cup", 4-team tourney amongst east coast teams (we won it), and I also sent the Detroit Red Wings on a preseason tour of Britain, playing several games there against British clubs. It's great to have this option (and a lot of fun), but not terribly realistic pertaining to North American clubs. Most professional hockey teams in North America don't organize tournaments or go barnstorming in the preseason (it DOES happen, but very rarely). So I'm not sure how to react to this feature in the end. Again, it feels more like something soccer-ish leftover from CM rather than something it was felt would add to the game.
There are also plenty of Little Things included with the non-NHL leagues that I think are great. The limit on foreign imports in the Canadian juniors, and other rules unique to each league like that. SI needs to keep this attention to detail for the "lesser" league like this and expand on them in future editions.
ONLINE LEAGUE PLAY POTENTIAL?
I won't spend a lot of time on this, but needless to say it doesn't really have any. I don't see any existing EHM leagues switching over from the freeware to NHL EHM, and I feel sorry for the poor soul who will try to make an NHL EHM online league from scratch because there are too many key parts of the game that will stand in the way.
Undoubtedly someone *will* try, and someone might even make an NHL EHM league work in the longrun I suppose. But it's not at all friendly to online league play, and league play is becoming more and more a key component to the freeware EHM's popularity.
So this is an opportunity missed. Not a big one to be honest, because it's probably best that SI concentrate on the single-player aspect anyways. And there are always still freeware EHM leagues or online league play.
OVERALL
Overall one thing sticks out to me with this game -- it's not a lot of fun. I think that somewhat shows through with a lot of what I've written about above. It feels like a chore due to a clunky and unintuitive interface, and it gets in the way of gameplay. I never have truly felt I was having fun playing either the beta demo or the gold demo. I'm never cackling with delight as I make a trade favoring me go through, nor am I anxiously awaiting the outcome of games. It doesn't pull you in, there are too many obstacles standing in the way.
This game also still feels a bit insulting to North Americans (the beta demo did even moreso in my opinmion, and some of those issues have indeed been corrected in the gold demo). The AHL and ECHL are missing, and there are things included that don't affect North American teams in real life. Plus the 1-20 ratings system is off-putting and not how things are done in North America, regardless of what number lie underneath it all. All in all this will probably cripple its North American appeal and make it hard for it to penetrate the North American market like SI would like.
NHL EHM without a doubt offers some fantastic new things we haven't seen in the EHM series yet. More contract options, media interaction, the huge database of teams, leagues, rosters, and countries. All these features bring something to the table the freeware EHM or other hockey sims haven't yet. And it's fun and informative to even just go through the gold demo and play with some of the non-NHL leagues, much like how CM has tons and tons of leagues.
But to be honest that's also a problem, because this doesn't feel much like EHM anymore. Too many of those "new features" just feel like CM leftovers, and not anything actually new or unique to the sport that hockey is. Instead it feels like I'm playing CM with a hockey theme slapped on top. I guess it's too much a carbon copy of CM, and while that may be fine and great to lure in existing CM fans (especially in Europe), that's going to alienate some others. Its CM pedigree means nothing in North America, because CM has almost no penetration into the North American market. I think it was a mistake to tie EHM in so closely with CM. It's one thing to base it on the CM engine, it's another thing to have it seem like such a CM clone. EHM lost part of its identity with this release.
Having played the gold demo, I personally won't be purchasing this. I would never play it if I did, it'd just sit there on my hard drive much like the beta demo did after the first week or so. If I'm going to spend $50 on a game I'd like to be able to enjoy it and not be tied down by an interface that hamstrings me on certain tasks and requires infinite patience for others. If we were talking $20 or so I'd buy it, if for no other reason than to support Riz and what he's done with EHM.
But around $50 is entirely too much to fork over for a game that right now has taken a lot of steps backwards from the freeware version and lost a good portion of its identity. SI needs to distance EHM more from CM in future editions.
I hope Riz and SI get future versions of NHL EHM right and fix some of these really bad issues and problems. If they can, and can also bring back some of EHM's unique identity, I'd be extremely tempted to buy into the series. But for right now I personally can't recommend this. Give Riz and SI another year and we'll see where the game is at. They're listening patiently to a lot of these complaints right now (which I have to give them credit for), and we'll hope that some of these are addressed in the next version.
-- Primis.
good lord you are pathetic. If you are a any kind of hokcey fan (in the sim world) then you should be happier then Theo Fleury in a strip joint...But after looking over your site I can tell you are a know it all whiney jibber jabber numb nut...Save your money and invest in some ADD meds.
I'm Out
Oh sure, I'm pathetic.
I mean, I registered on some site just so I could post one flame someone and tell them how they should spend their hard-earned money. I put so much work into it all that I couldn't even be bothered by functuation, grammar or capitalization!!...
Oh wait...
-- Primis.
I'm sorry your right, uncalled for. After reading your review I can tell you are a hockey fan and it boggles my mind how a real hockey fan would not be drooling over this product. If you are not a sports sim fan I could see it , but it sure seems like you have an iterest in this sort of game.....I have been waiting for this game for 4 years and I have played the hell out of the freeware game. I can honestly say I will completely remove the freeware game from my hardrive July 2nd and never look back.
ps I am an English teacher so please dont make me proof read your review. I could really make things difficult for you...hehe
If you look at the SI forums and FHockey, you'll notice a lot of EHM fans seem to share my sentiments towards NHL EHM, and there's a substantial amount of disappointment regarding it. Some will buy it anyways and just hope it gets better, and that's fine I guess. I really won't argue with supporting Riz.
And to be honest, I *am* excited about a lot of things in the game (the media interaction, the enormous database, etc), but if you've ever played CM you'll also realize that some of those features are simply there because they were already in CM, and that they weren't even customized for hockey in many cases. And that makes me feel cheated, like it's sloppy seconds or something...
It's just all presented in such a way that I can't justify spending the money on it because I know I won't play it much. As much as not having the AHL hurts, it's also disappointing to me that I can't play NCAA or ECHL either, and it's going to be difficult to get some North Americans excited about the European Leagues.
I spent a long time drooling over the prospect of a much-fuller EHM, like you said. NHL EHM doesn't really match any of those expectations though, at least for me personally. I've been playing the freeware for a very long time, as I mentioned in the review, and I've also played CM, OOTP, FoF, TSB, and other sports management sim games, so I'm not a newbie to the genre.
If I really didn't love EHM, the community, and hockey I wouldn't have gone to through trouble of compiling the review. I think SI and Riz made a mistake in making it so much like CM (beyond just using the engine), and I really want to see the presentation and interface stuff fixed the next time around.
Oh and for the record, word now is that the digital download will be set at $40 US. Still no word on the boxed version though, and I'm still leaning more towards $50 for that when all is said and done. That's a lot of money (ene just the $40) for a sports management sim that you're not in love with...
-- Primis