NHL 14: Thoughts on the "Live the Life" Mode - Wiggy's Blog

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NHL 14: Thoughts on the "Live the Life" Mode Stuck

Posted on August 9, 2013 at 02:30 AM.

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EA has finally posted a blog with a trailer and some details about the new "Live the Life" mode for NHL 14. The mode is a long-awaited revamp of the Be-A-Pro career option that's been present in the NHL series for the last few years. Many fans of the series were hopeful that this new spin on a career mode would freshen up the stale Be-A-Pro experience, especially if it was to borrow elements from the NBA 2K series and its "My Player" feature. Unfortunately, this new "addition" to NHL 14 looks half-baked, lacking in inspiration and presentation (much like the boring NHL '94 mode that is also being touted).

The conceit of this new mode seems to be that you'll have to make decisions about how to carry your player, both on and off the ice. This comes in the form of pre-game and post-game interviews as well as key decisions you have to make when dealing with your family or hanging out with buddies. All of these choices, as well as your on-ice performance, feed into likeability meters, and you have to manage these meters in four categories: fans, teammates, management and family. These meters will translate into things like cheers/boos, endorsement deals, off-ice events, becoming the team captain, getting traded, as well as your player's attributes.

In theory, some of these are actually cool ideas. I like the concept of your team hanging out with you more if you become likeable, and getting promoted to captain and being cheered by the crowd is also a fun wrinkle. However, when EA talks about "living the life," I don't think most people were envisioning the exact same career setup with a few text-based choices being dropped in (well, I think people were HOPING that wouldn't be the case). It really just seems like the same Be-A-Pro that we've known over the last few years with a few multiple choice questions (complete with grammatical errors!). I don't really feel like I'm "living the life" when I'm watching some basic meters and having my stats penalized for going out to a night club.

When you get down to it, all that's really changed is that they've added some text questions that possibly boost or decay your stats. These questions trickle into the various meters, but the meters are mostly dictated by your on-ice play, which is how the Be-A-Pro mode played before. I'm sure there will be some juggling in terms of the off-ice scenarios and game interviews (keeping teammates happy while not getting in trouble out on the town, for example), but all of this seems incredibly rudimentary. When the most dramatic thing about the sizzle trailer is the music, you know the "Live the Life" mode doesn't have a lot to hang its hat on.

What's also bothersome about this new mode is that it doesn't appear that much effort was put in to improving the presentation. The commentary and in-game overlays will be the same, and all of the menus and such look about how they did. There is no graphical representation of your player during interviews or in off-ice activities, and even endorsements come in the form of extra cash and images for your trophy case. How about some representation of your wealth, such as a house or cars? How about actually creating some new cinematics for this mode, even if there is just text conversation options? I can't believe that creating some newspaper or Hockey News screenshots showing your player's exploits would've been that hard to concoct. Just like the NHL 94 mode, none of this looks particularly well conceived or resourced on EA's part.

Since the NHL series is an annual franchise, maybe there is some merit to a mode like this if it was designed like Fight Night Champion, with a new "story" being created each season (grizzled veteran, rookie, cocky star). There could still be choices and some level of agency for the user, but this mode would allow more control for the people at EA. Cinematics could be created to actually tell a story rather than something half-baked like what they're showing, which seems to please no one.

I was excited to see what EA had in store for this mode, as all we've really seen so far has been some meaningful and needed changes to gameplay but nothing much else. The NHL '94 mode seems like it's not really going to please anyone except for those who trade on its name, and this new offering seemed like a promising direction for the NHL series in terms of solo content. With what I'm seeing, I'm not too optimistic about the choices EA has made for this.

Comments

# 1 GrandMaster B @ Aug 9

EA doesn't seem to get it. I wonder if they ever will. If the best thing about this upcoming game turns out to be the revamped fighting engine, that will be truly sad.

# 2 Simple Mathematics @ Aug 9

There was just very minimal effort put into this year's game, and it's really showing. They better have been using their time to create an awesome next gen title for NHL 15. If that game isn't awesome I will be thoroughly disappointed and I will consider other options other than EA's NHL.

# 3 13whitebread @ Aug 9

Agreed. NHL 15 better knock it out of the park on presentation and new announcers if not this cat is gone bye bye

# 4 Finn @ Aug 9

I love the question about the party. Your teammates insist you come along. Everyone else is resting up. Who the hell is everyone else??

# 5 goalieump413 @ Aug 9

This is very disappointing. I had faith that the mode would introduce visible elements that an NHL player would see like a home, locker room, training facilities etc. Also EA seems to be focusing on a narrow subset of hockey experiences. I'd rather see them expand this mode by introducing more health, fatigue, life-changing experiences, and the effects of wealth or role playing into the game, rather than a tweak-able series of button presses.

# 6 acidraindrops08 @ Aug 9

This game's needed a presentation uprgrade for the past 10 years and hasn't recieved one, doubt NHL 15 will be any different. They can't even fix the stat engine in Dynasty mode. Look's like another year of playing VS and club.

# 7 onac22 @ Aug 10

Maybe they didn't try very hard because NHL is about to get some dev team changes?

Would be nice if Rammer the unintelligible would be canned for lack of imagination.

# 8 Storm12 @ Aug 11

This kind of seems like a watered down version of the old madden 06/07 be a player modes, with a few graphical improvements added to it. But even then those old madden games were better because you had a house that got fancier as you got more money, you had an agent and other things that you could get better versions of as you got more popular... Seems like EA actually went way backwards on this one.

# 9 druez @ Aug 12

My guess is all the presentation elements, live arena's or whatever they are calling it, player involvement etc... are all going to be new things in the ignite engine. Why would they bother changing all that stuff in swan song of the current gen. From what I understand all those engines will be shared among the games. So live arena's stadium etc... would be something that each team could use and custom tailor to their sport. Same with physic's etc...

# 10 druez @ Aug 12

But I agree this live the life mode looks lame.