PowerPlayGoal.com – Hockey From A Different Angle

So you’ve played the NHL, the AHL and heck even the OHL, but they’ve never satisfied your craving for hockey – so, I would like to present you with the alternative; The Gamestar Hockey League (GHL).

Published and released in 1989 by Gamestar, developed by Mindspan; and it was released on both Commodore 64 and Microsoft DOS.
This games roots are from Canada, so they should know what they are doing. Right?

The game starts off with the usual tacky late 80’s splash screen. On it, 3d text rotates in displaying the games name, beneath, is a goalie half wearing an old mask displaying some kind of injury; Im thinking its supposed to be a black eye.
This screen then begins to play the games credits and will continue to loop until you press a key.

Pressing a key takes you to a “pop trivia” page, asking you a question about hockey.
However, rather than use real life hockey for its questions, it bases its questions upon the fictional league created by the game, the GHL.
I imagine that entering the correct answer unlocks something, however because I have no clue how to answer:
“What year was Marcel Alamode inducted into the GHL hall of fame”, or “What was Espy Phillips” best year” or even “How many times did Gordon Howie” play, I could not find out what happens.

The next screen is the menu, with 3 choices – Exhibition Game, League Play and Adjust Joystick.

First off I chose Exhibition Game.
The menu on choosing this allows you to choose from a team from either the Eastern or Western conference; and the city names that you can choose from seem about accurate from this games era.

The next step asks you to choose a few settings, including what controls each player is going to use, and even the option to work together with player 2. You can additionally choose the number of players per team (2,4 or 6),  choose Full Rules, Relaxed rules or Aussie Rules; change game speed, difficulty and even goalie control.

The next screen allows you to start the game, change the lines and even goes further to allow changes to the playbook and create new plays.
After customising the game to your standards, you are free to play the game.

The graphics of the game are by 1989 standards, pretty decent. The player sprites are a little on the generic side, all looking the same (blame a lack of computers memory), however there are plenty of colours; its easy to differentiate what teams are playing and the surrounding crowd, boards around the rink and even the arena look quite pleasant. They have even chucked a ref in to complete the “realism”.

However, this praise is short lived, as we realise the controls for the game are needlessly complicated. You choose what player y0u want at face off, and then proceed to play as that player until play stops. The controls are unresponsive, and dotted all around the keyboard making it very hard to play the game well. When you activate player goalie control, it gets even more confusing as the goalie has his own set of controls. I can’t help but feel this game really would enjoy having a joystick to make playing easier – but as I have no access to one, and am certain many people out there don’t.
Sound effects in game are pretty poor, with the generic buzz sound from retro games making a common appearance whenever you score, shoot or get checked. This is interlaced with “ragtime era” style piano music, and is definably the games weakest point.

Actual gameplay feels good, the players seem to move around fairly well, the game has a slight over tendancy to give out penalties, and shooting is a real hit or miss situation; as it winning a face off .
At the end of a period you get fairly detailed information about the game, including penalty time, shots and a scoring summary.

The league play function takes the above gameplay into a season format, with a myriad of options being made available to the player; including the amount of intra-division and intra-conference games in a season and how the playoffs will run. The gameplay is as exhibition mode.

Overall, this game is not bad. The graphics are good for the era and whilst the player sprites feel a little lacking in detailed they look good as does the rink and crowd. The league mode is fairly customisable and definably has potential to last you a long time.
The games experience is let down on a few small points however, one being the slightly weird controls, and another being the strange questions it asks you on startup. The games music is also another low point, with me resorting to muting my laptop during this review – It really is awful.

Final Verdict: 5/10 – Not Bad

I’m KevKev, this is PowerPlayGoal.com

When it comes to American Sports in Great Britain, not limited to but especially so in Hockey’s case, the way the sport is treated is beyond ridiculous, and it’s been made to feel more like British Football (or Soccer to anyone from North America) on ice, with promotion and relegation between leagues rather than franchise based systems in place, the same teams winning every season, at least four different championship trophies (knockout cup, league cup, etc), adverts all over the jerseys, lack of creativity when it comes to naming teams (think of how many teams in British Football are named “United”), and worst of all, many of the logos and jerseys are horrible. It’s almost as if the teams are deliberately trying to make themselves look and feel tacky to serious sports fans.

For this edition of War On Logos, I will be listing the top five things that are generally wrong with the identities of most of these teams from the United Kingdom, starting with…

5: Complete Irrelevance

Example team: Peterborough Islanders

As mentioned earlier, there is a general lack of creativity when it comes to naming UK based teams, with many of them resorting to using comfortably generic names that ultimately have little or nothing to do with the area they are based in. Pictured here for example is the logo of the Peterborough Islanders. To be fair, the logo looks quite good (probably because it was stolen or something), but they were named the Islanders because one of the founders of the team had ties with the Falkland Islands. And you guessed it; the name has absolutely nothing to do with the City of Peterborough.

Other examples: Chelmsford Chieftains, Streatham Redskins, Sheffield Scimitars, Swindon Wildcats, Basingstoke Bison… I could go on for ages here.

4: Boring, Old Fashioned Designs

Example team: Trafford Metros

Looking at this logo, you’d think that it was designed in the early 20^th century if not even earlier, despite the fact that this team hasn’t even been around that long. Believe it or not, this team was founded as recently as 2007, and then changed to this name and logo in 2009! Logos in this category are usually either hand drawn, or they tend to feature only the black lining, lacking in many, if any other colours. Most of the time these logos also seem to be trying to emulate British Football logos in appearance: this one shown here looks more like it belongs on a 1900’s Football shirt instead of a 2009 Ice Hockey jersey.

Other Examples: Oxford City Stars, Murrayfield Racers (defunct), Lee Valley Lions, Cambridge University Blues

3: Generic Clipart (Or Clipart-ish Graphics)

Example Team: Telford Tigers

When a team can’t afford/be bothered to hire a professional designer to make a good logo for them, one of their two other options is to go with a generic piece of clipart instead, which is usually provided to them by a jersey manufacturer such as Rhino (I had to mention them at some point). These graphics always have a tendency to be overly detailed, with way too many thin lines, and most of these logos make use of everybody’s favourite shading effect, gradients. Amateur designers always seem to think that gradients are “cool looking” for logos, yet it always feels tacky. Many logos of this type also tend to use generic word art to go with the clipart.

Other Examples: Chelmsford Chieftains, Wightlink Raiders, Paisley Pirates, Braehead Clan

2: Blatantly Stolen Logos

Example Team: Guildford Flames

Oh wow, that logo doesn’t look familiar at all now, does it? The other option for teams that won’t hire a professional designer to make a good looking logo for them is to instead “borrow” one already being used by a North American team (not limited to Hockey), much like how this Guildford Flames logo is evidently a rip-off of the Calgary Flames. It’s as if these teams either don’t know any better or they think that nobody will notice or care. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but at least the teams that use generic clipart are actually trying to come up with an identity for themselves!

Other Examples: Romford Raiders, Streatham Redskins, Basingstoke Bison, Bracknell Bees, Manchester Phoenix, Grimsby Redwings… yeah, that’s a lot. And I haven’t even named every team that does this!

1: A Sponsor in the Team Name

Example team: Wightlink Raiders

Never mind using crappy Clipart or stolen logos: this is about as low as it can possibly get for British teams. Most, if not all UK teams are funded primarily by sponsors, and as if the adverts all over the jerseys weren’t enough, some teams actually make the name of their biggest sponsor part of their team name, with the Isle of Wight based Wightlink Raiders being an example of this (the sponsor is a ferry company that pays for the team to travel across to the mainland, go figure).

Other Examples: Not many, although some of the top level Elite League teams are doing it: the “LBM” Belfast Giants, “GMB” Nottingham Panthers, and “MobileX” Newcastle Vipers.

And that’s pretty much a summary of all British Hockey logos there. Maybe some time in future I’ll take a look at teams from other countries in Europe, as there are some pretty bad logos there too.

I’m Wildwing64, and I declare War On Logos.

This is more of a self gloss than a worthy news item; however anything that costs an absurd amount of money, planning and time all in the name of hockey is worthwhile news in my opinion.

The NHL unsurprisingly listed three games to be played outside the USA and Canada at the beginning of the 2010 / 2011 Season. We at PowerPlayGoal.com decided that it was high time we took a random jetset mini break to catch some NHL action (its rather hard to catch decent hockey on this side of the pond).

Astonishingly, just 2 days after they were announced, tickets for the match up in Stockholm (Blue Jackets vs. Sharks) were on sale!
Armed with an American Express card, the race was on to book some decent seats that wouldn’t cost us the earth.
However; Ticnet (a company owned by the infamous Ticketmaster company) refused to accept my Amex, or any card to be precised.
One phone call to Sweden late and I had secured two tickets to the NHL game. Seems they do not accept foreign cards online (take note anyone planning on going). All I had to do was transfer the money across to them from my bank (This cost a lot of money also).
One week later, the tickets arrived; and the trip was confirmed. PowerPlayGoal.com is off to Sweden.

A trip report will be written when we go. Roll on October!

Kev.