Buy Franchise Hockey Manager 2014

This game has tons of potential but at its current state it's far behind EHM07.

As i go into my third season everytime i try and play the first game it continues to crash the game. Waste of money and there are so many exploits to get any player you want into your team. Think i will stick to the console nhl games.

At least they are playable and don't crash.

If you liked the Eastside Hockey manager series, then you'll like this. Lots of room for improvement, but I like it and the fact you can start anywhere in history of the league.

this game needs some work still... hope they can fix it with updates

I was so excited when I found this game on steam, and then I played it. 20 dollars down the drain. I got through year one fine and I said those reviews were garbage! Then on the day before July 1 when you try to sim to it my game always crashes. In addition the player logic makes NO sense. Lundqvist is willing to sign for 3,700,000 and other times he says he would rather test the market. If this game ran smoothly I would play it ALL THE TIME. But I can't even go 1 day without a crash and I have a very new and updated computer. Fix the game and I'll fix this negative review. Thumbs down from me.

Has some great potential. The interface is pleasant to look at, and a lot of the actual game mechanics are sound. however;

Crashes constantly when you click on certain things/sticks you in parts of the interface where you are unable to get out of, and you have to kill the task. Crashed about 6-8 times the first hour I played it. Sometimes the whole useful top part of the interface disappears and you have to kill the task to restart. Trading is nice and challenging, however if you respond to a declined trade offer, they will never respond to you until you go in and re-submit the trade a second time. When signing players, the option to re-sign them is often greyed out, until you navigate somewhere else and go back to the player's screen a second time. Sometimes windows pop up sloppily over top of other windows, with no clear distinction between them and what is behind them. It is baffling that someone could have released a game in this stage of it's development without it falling into the category of 'early access'.

Is kinda on the right track.

Crashes regularly. Allows unrealistic trades. Seems too easy to go from also-ran to contender. Seems buggy.

Best off giving this a miss till a few years down the track

I have enjoyed OOTP (and was also a huge fan of Inside The Park Baseball) but this disappointed me. While I do appreciate the fact that it is one of the few NHL sims out there, please don't release an unfinished game next time OOTPD! This game had SO much potential but they didn't bother polishing it. Please stay away untill next years version comes out, or else you will be disappointed.

I Paid 3 Refined Metal for this game which is not much because it was in a bundle.

If you are a fan of eastside hockey manager it is sort of similar and it's a nice and easy way to pick up and play and learn the basics of the game.

But I stress this game is Buggy I have only encountered one crash during my playtime but the main kicker of the game is that it's not realistic with the trades sadly. For example I chose New York rangers as my team (Huge fan of NYR since 2002 :) ) I was able to trade Martin st louis + 4th round pick for Alex ovechkin which is not a realistic trade at all other trades I conducted were (Brad Richards + 2nd round pick for Steven Stamkos) (Beniot Pouliot + 6th round pick for Loui Erikson) (Rick Nash for Taylor Hall + 2nd round pick) as you can see these trades are ridiculous and will never happen i laughed and shocked when I got Alex ovechkin in a trade, I heard that contracts can be bad but only played 1 year and it was mostly zuccarello + brassard asking for decent contracts.

Altogether this game is noo nooo way worth full or even half price sadly but I'm reviewing it for the price I paid which is roughly £0.45 and altogether for the price I enjoyed it but Eastside hockey manager is good but sadly I don't know how to get recent updates for that game so this will do

Good game but limited and buggy as well. 7/10

Poorly designed and unfinished. Skip it.

If you love hockey, and love managing everything related to your favorite NHL team, then this is the definitive game for you beside the NHL series! There is no on ice gameplay though. Just strickly a menu user interface with text. So if that is something your really into, then I would not make the purchase.

NOTE: Only saying recommend because I would like to see this improve and become the OOTP of hockey. It seriously isn't worth full price for anyone but the most die hard of hockey fans who have a little patience.

Needs work, needs a lot of work. I have at least been able to enjoy it some, playing a historic season so far.

Not worth full price, however. Glad I picked it up on sale.

Pros
- It's a hockey sim, can't find many new hockey sims.
- Historic seasons available.

Cons
- Play by play is awful, no mention of the penalties no real feel for the game other than what seem like random shots
- Faceoff results? No clue what they are supposed to tell us in the play by play; no idea where these faceoffs are or why they are.
- UI isn't as streamlined as I would like, seems to be too much guess work trying to initailly figure out where to go for some things.

What I would like to see added
- At least start with something like the old Gretzky hockey used to have where you can see an overhead 2D view of the game
- Would love to see a 3D view like what FM uses (give us that and better UI and I may never play anything else)

A big database of players. That is pretty much it. I think (if they make any) next years game will be much better, if they concentrate on the game-engine. Right now it's a bit simple and you ending up just simulate through all the games.

This game is a bad joke, right? Was not even able to play a single game because of game crashs.

I am a big fan of Franchise Hockey Manager 2014, however, I would love to see some updates to keep not only my interest, but others who have reviewed the game negatively.

1. Redesign the interface = It's bland, very bare, very white. perhaps add team colours to the mix.
-the menus are weird to navigate.
2. Free agents do not accept high paying contract offers. this is a problem.
3. The ability to hire a Coach is benificial if you dont want to manage the strategies yourself.
4. many trade offers which would be considered fair or agreeable, or not considered by the AI.

various reviews list the same and other problems. I really hope OOTP developers will make additions, and fixes to this hockey simulation. It has the potential to be the best hockey sim out there.

If you love hockey, you will definitely enjoy this game. The depth to the leagues around the world, the stats, being able to relive any season in history (back to 1947 for now, future releases may go back farther), or even making your own league entirely with fictional players. All of it adds to the experience and makes it really quite addictive. You also are able to input any team logos or player pictures you want, since as it is they have generic sorts of logos for all teams. The full simulation experience is really cool, and you can watch or skip past all the games as they play out, and everything's fairly easy to navigate or find. I highly recommend it to any sports or hockey fans.

I am a fan of OOTP baseball, i'm an even bigger fan of hockey simulation. Got every possible hockey sim out there. When i saw that OOTP made a hockey sim i was extatic. Never been so disappointed in a game. Even compare to the most obscure hockey sim i have made by a guy in his basement, this game is bad. When you add to the equation that its from OOTP its just plainly awfull.

Historical game is a joke, no farm team, no scouting a sub par game of a bad game.

AI is so freaking weak, transaction wise you can get Crosby for a pick and a few average guys, trading left and right without any sense at all. I.E. june 30 trading a great young goaler for a 42 y.o def. and to add to that losing their num 1 goalie the next day on free agency.

The game aint following the NHL contract rules at all, i just lost Galcheniuk and Gallagher 2 RESTRICTED free agent, both refusing long term deal of 7.5 mil and 4.5 mil to watch them sign a 1 year 125k contract with an AHL team.. First theres no logic in that behavior, second an RFA cant sign with another team just like that. The only way is from an hostile offer sheet from another NHL team and then were suppose to have the option to match the hostile offer and if we dont want to match the offer theres a lot of different draft picks compensation depending of the amount of the offer. If youre claiming to do a hockey sim, the minimum would be to follow the rules of the real life game you are *simulating*...

Small ridiculous stuff like the stars choice after a game, a guy with no points with 6 min game time getting the first star while a guy with a hat trick getting no star. Sweeping the other team in 4 games in the Stanley cup final to see a guy from the other team getting the final mvp awards with 10 points less than my 5th scorer. Watching a goalie getting the vezina while playing 40 games not appearing in any leader stats while theres a goalie with 54 victory and leading in goals against avg and shout outs. Same thing applies for almost every category.

Scouting is completely useless, playing blind mode or not doesnt change a thing.

Very unintuitive UI, the pages always coming back to the base choice, so you always need to clic your way back to were you want the page to be. I.E. the rooster page always put you back to the basic page while i want to see the off 1 stats. Same thing while tryting to make a trade. You choose the other team, see the scouting report of a player and then your back to your own team so you have to clic back your way to the other team.

You cant schedules your goaler in advance so either you have to stop the game simulation to change the goalie or just let your num 1 goaler play the 82 games.

The game feeling is meh at best, no real feeling of interacting with your players, coach, team owner other gm's etc...

I could go on and on and thats only after 2 seasons, i cant imagine how bad it turns out with contracts, salary caps, player pools in the long run..

I have a more complete hockey sim made by a solo guy than this game made by OOTP.
As for any comparison with EHM, i really cant see how anyone who played it can see anything in this game coming close of it.

I was so freaking happy to see OOTP doing a hockey sim.. Its a real shame to give us this product.

Let me first start by saying OOTP is a great game and the developers have done a great job with it. Love the series...

Was a big fan when EHM was out and other hockey simulators (whether it's NHL series for Xbox or browse-based, or even a hockey simulator thats downloadable). This game has A TON of potential, but it is lacking in the UI controls, the settings, and small parts of hockey that means a lot to the sport. As you read the review of Dugger999, he is 100% right in every aspect in signing these players and losing them in a blink of an eye. RFA's signing with lower level hockey leagues, trading older players and receiving a star upcoming goaltender. (mind you the old one will be released the next day, whereas the young goaltender will be a unsigned rookie, rookie under contract, or RFA) The game crashes constantly on Macbooks. I can't go 1-2 weeks without having to frantically save in hopes that it doesn't crash on me. Another problem with the game is that in the Free Agency Center, they place players who cannot be signed (I.E. underagers, undrafted rookies, etc.) in there rather than automatically filtering them out. You'll spend about 15 minutes filtering everythnig Prior to finding actual Signable players. A big interface problem would be when I attempt to SCROLL with my track pad or mouse, all of the menus scroll with it. How could you release a game and not have all the settings inputted the correct way so that all the screen and menus don't go with it? It doesn't make sense. For more information, look at Duggers review. This game has a ton of potential, they just should've held onto it a LOT longer and did a TON more tweaking prior to releasing this for sales. It's most definitely NOT WORTH 39.99. Maybe $15.99 tops if they fix the bugs. As is now, I'd apprase it at around $5.99-$9.99 with the crashes, the buggy interface, and missing important contractual issues for players in the game.

(Note: If you have a LTIR, they still count it towards your cap in the game when it should be gone come September 1st. So for you Flyers fans, yes, Chris Pronger's double digit million dollar salary WILL count against your cap)

If I would reconsider buying this game if i had the chance. It wasn't worth the 19.99 steam sale that I got out of it. I would reconsider my opinion if and when they update the game.... hopefully before next year's version is out. It's just way too buggy for a first time Hockey Simulator to be throw out there on the marketplace. PLEASE WAIT UNTIL THEY UPDATE OR UNTIL NEXT YEAR'S VERSION IS AVAILABLE! OTHERWISE YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED! THIS IS YOUR WARNING!

Overall the concept has a lot of potential, and this is exactly the type of hockey game I want, but the execution just isn't there.

The UI is really awkward, cluttered, confused, and its hard to know what you should be doing. There are too many menus which either don't tell you enough, or tell you things that don't matter. The key to a good franchise sports manager game is that it's basically an RPG where you try to get experience and level up all your different players. That process is completely opaque and it feels like you have little control over what's going on. Even tinkering with the lineup, something that I love doing in a game like NHL 14 is tedious and the results are not transparent.

Now that they have a basic game format down, I really hope they release a new version next year which significantly changes certain game mechanics to add that RPG fun element so that it feels like you're not just simulating everything but actually have meaningful decisions to make, something which the game in its current version completely lacks.

Let me start despite the playing time I used to play off steam and have many more hours plugged, I was really excited when I seen FHM as I am a huge fan of hockey and I bought it in an instant, thinking it was from OOTP made it even cooler, as I have bought OOTP 13 baseball and they had delivered a nice product. However, to addon to my displeasure I bought the game when it was $50 during X-mas and have seen 3 updates [2 being bug fixes at best]
Reasons I am displeased (oh trust me theres more)
-Less then desireable U.I, often clicking 2 or 3 times just to get deeper into a menu.
-Weird trades, both what the A.I will accept and the trades the A.I makes, [Nathan Mackinnon for Dale Weise and Budaj]
-Simulation stars are.... interesting? A guy who scores 3 goals does not get a star, while the 10 shot guy gets 1st star.
-More then horrendous wait times for updates, whether it is a simple patch or a entire addon the wait times for either can range from 2-5 months, even bug fixes are crazy long waits.
-Simulations are off and bad, with teams such as Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers reaching top slots with modern start dates,
-The free agent system is a mess with Restricted free agents signing deals with other teams, without a compensation pick or having the ability to match the offer,
-Weird contracts, players refuse multi year 6.5 million doller offers to sign with other teams for under 3m,
-Little to no interaction with players, gm or coach's, and when their is conversations they are often dull and repetitive.
At this current stage and with the lack of updates unless you have the desire to wait months on end, even for a bug-fix.
I reccomend you stay away --For now--, Despite the cons this game has alot of potential and I reccomend you look into it in the future to see if it has been changed, but for now, stay away.