Hockey Manager 20|20 Review
By: John (@jiggly_333)
- Hockey Manager 20|20
- Publisher - netmin games
- PC
A long time ago, I used to play a lot of Facebook based sports games. Most of them were just management based games where you had to wait a certain period of time to get the tokens to get players or train. Essentially, Football Manager and Out of the Park Baseball clones, but with microtransactions. But there was one game, that was so extremely different that I think about it a lot.
I can’t remember the name anymore, but I remember that you were in control of this soccer player in England. It combined the use of live action cutscenes and really difficult QTEs to not only allow you to train your player to be better, but also crafted a story. You could choose to use your daily allotment of energy points to go to training or to an advertisement shoot to earn money. Or, you could even choose to use those energy points to go on dates or hang with friends. This concept of a sports game/dating sim/financial sim has never fully left my brain and I’ve always wondered if any other game developers would try to make something similar.
This brings me to Hockey Manager 2020.
At first, I thought it was just another in-depth Franchise mode. I made a new female coach, chose my picture from one of the really nice hand drawn avatars, laughed at the unlicensed NHL team names (Favorites: Pittsburgh Northbirds, Washington Cops, Anaheim Tweetys), and began my career. I was offered a job as the coach of a German team and the Argentine National Team and started from there. But after a while trying to put together my first lineup, I noticed something incredible: The “Private” tab.
The Private tab has the normal stuff you’d expect, any stats you’ve accumulated as a PC, your wins and losses and that, but there was so much more. First of all, you start the game with the relationship statuses “single” and “no children”. Why is this important? Well, not only are you controlling a hockey team, but you have to manage your personal life. You have to choose how much you’re willing to spend on your personal lifestyle, you have to choose how much time you’re going to invest in your private life. And while normally in sports management sims your salary doesn’t matter, I found a literal stock market sim going in the background of this tab. The personal life portion not only has to do with personal finance, but personal relationships. As I completed my first day, my coach got a call from a guy asking her out on a date. He was wearing sunglasses indoors, so I immediately said no.
Then I decided I needed to start over because a whole world in this game had opened up to me. This wasn’t just a hockey management sim. It was a life sim based around you as a hockey coach, managing personal expenses and relationships, while still giving time and effort to your team. So, I started a new game, this time creating my own team. That was a mistake.
Or at least, how I did it was a mistake. This is a warning to anyone who wants to create a team in Hockey Manager 2020: You don’t have very many resources to start with. Which means that if you decide to, say, create a team in the game’s equivalent of the AHL, you’re going to have a bad time. My “Milwaukee Swans” clearly didn’t stand a chance against the kind of top-quality opposition they were up against. I think that if you’re going to try the “create a team” route, stick to Europe, where you’ll be on a much more level playing field. However, there was an extra bit of fun in taking full control of the ownership aspect of the club. You have control over the expansion of your arena, decision-making in what training camps and PR events your team has, and a full in-depth revenue calculator. Of course, this was something that was available to me in the other save, I just happened to only realize it when I started with this save. So, after losing a few games I realized my mistake and decided that maybe I should just play as an extremely rich team so I could fully experience the end-game goals of Hockey Manager 2020.
This time, I started a new save with the “Choose a Club” selection. I supported my local team by picking the knock-off Chicago Blackhawks. The Chicago Whitebirds were given a brand new GM and I was able to see what a fully upgraded stadium looked like. The team was so rich that I could probably buy any player I wanted from Europe, but my team was so good that it wouldn’t be worth it to pay for any of them. My first paycheck was enough to let me get on board with some pretty solid stock options. In fact, in this save I barely even touched the coaching side of things, instead signing a good assistant coach and passing all the work off to him so I could pay more attention to the stock market. I got in so deep that I found that there was a section right next to the stock market for betting on your games. If I remember sports history correctly, this is the sort of thing that Pete Rose got banned from baseball for. But, Hockey Manager 2020 lets you bet freely, so I started racking up the money.
So, how do you, a Hockey Manager in 2020, spend your money in this game? Well, if you’re on a struggling team like my Milwaukee Swans, you can actually donate your own personal funds to the team. That way, if you somehow hit the jackpot in the stock market, you can actually use that money to improve your team for the future. You can also invest that money in the bank. You’re given some sort of investment placeholder like a gold or platinum ingot that’s valued at a certain level. Its value rises as time goes on and you can eventually take it out if you need that money. You can also buy other investments, like how I bought a sword and the game told me that I had a “30% chance to receive +1 Penetration Strength”. I’m very foggy on the details of that stat, but I think that means I can use it to kill Gary Bettman. These bonus investments give you a bonus on a certain stat that somehow relates to the item. You can also spend that money on your “lifestyle” which relates to the happiness of your significant other. Don’t worry about finding one because they literally just show up periodically.
You see, you don’t actively take part in very many of the activities that you say that you’re doing.
Since Hockey Manager 2020 is still mainly a hockey management sim, you do have control over tactics, how often certain plays are run, and ice time. You also have the ability to decide each player’s training regimen. Since my tactical hockey knowledge is constantly fluctuating between the hard-nose hitting Broad Street Bullies style and beautifully skillful Russian Ballet style and NOTHING in between, I let the assistant coach handle this. But compared to name-brand Eastside Hockey Manager, HM2020 is much more in depth in its tactics. Although, it is a bit hard to read. But we’ll get to that. After each intermission, you get to choose one rallying call out of four options and that’s about as much work you do during games. All your tactics were set ahead of time unless you want to make those changes mid-intermission. Then there’s contract negotiations that spring up not just for players and coaches, but also sponsors. It’s a bit of a mini-game where you try to move the numbers just enough so as to not anger the other party enough that they’ll walk away. And that’s about the extent to which you have active control over the team.
You’re allowed up to three “appointments” per month. Basically, they’re fun things that you can do as a GM to gain favor in a certain way, maybe get some extra money or fan support. But you only choose for this thing to happen. You don’t actually get to do anything when it happens. It’s kind of disappointing when you set up an interview and don’t get to actually respond to questions. These appointments are sort of left up to chance and while you might get a favor from your bank advisor on one trip, you might lose fan support on another. You don’t really have control over the success of the appointment, you just set it up.
As a whole, this game has some big issues with its English translation. I hope that they can patch that up with some better wording. There are certain things that need more clarity. While I said before that Hockey Manager 2020 may have a leg up on EHM in terms of tactics, the way to tell what players are better than others is sorta complicated. Their overall ability is combined between their inherent “strength” and their current form. As someone who’s played plenty of sports management sims, “strength” is usually a single attribute relating to body strength. Due to the translation issues here, it relates to the overall inherent ability of a player. It’s small things like that that really hold this game back from being really good.
In the end, just like any sports management game, it’s about getting used to the way the game plays and just putting a lot of time into building your team. It’s also about finding which part of the game is fun for you. While I wasn’t really that deep into the tactical aspect, the Private tab was an amazing adventure that I think is well worth the time and in-game investment. So if you’re itching for an alternative to something like Eastside or even NHL, try Hockey Manager 2020. It may not have the license to NHL teams, but it does have the official licenses to the French and Spanish leagues. Maybe try that out!