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

Overview

The beginning of the nineties brought us many classic games. 1993 brought us exciting 3d first person shooter Doom, Nintendo gave us the ever entertaining Super Mario World in 1990 and EA introduced us to their take on hockey for the first time in “NHL Hockey”, in 1991.
However amongst all these amazing, ground-breaking and revolutionary games; smaller funded developers still found time, and room in the market place to push out the worst video games imaginable.
One of these awful games is the “excitingly” named Solar Hockey League Hockey.
The description from the read me that came inside the game file says:

After the latter half of the 21st century, which had North America playing a

very minor role both politically and economically, there was a worldwide

(solar-system-wide actually) revival of ancient North American sports in the

22nd century, most notably of ice hockey. But in accordance with the true

spirit of the time, the players in the game were actually robots, controlled

externally by teams of humans. The sport, originated among American immigrants

in southwestern South America, proved to be very popular, especially in the

various human colonies on planets in the solar system. Now you have a chance

to challenge the teams in the Solar Hockey League.

Did that make you excited to play it? Did it make much sense to you? No?  Oh well, that’s a shame. It really is…

Gameplay

The game starts with a rather tacky splash screen featuring the name of the game, a sun, and what I presume is either a comet or solar flare flying through the air. To be entirely honest, it looks to me like a sperm on fire, but I am sure that’s one of those Freudian things.
After this delightful splash screen, we are greeted with a not so stylish menu.
Optioion 1 changes the home team, and Option 2 changes the away team. Laughably, it is possible to have a 2 player game, even though the controls are spread all over the keyboard, and there’s no mouse support. I wouldn’t get too excited about choosing what team you want to play as though, if you actually want to be able to play, you need to set your team as “human team”.
The teams you can play against (or watch play if your weird) are:
Phobos Miners, Titan Orange, Pluto IceMen, Neptune Blue, Saturn Ringers, Juipter Magnos, Mars Reds, Moon Minerals, or Earth Mutants.
After making your selection from the “creatively” named teams, you can choose to play a single game, or torture yourself by playing a league series (why oh why).
Additionally, you can return to dos (the best option really), change the player speed from slow to fast, or back again; toggle sound, change the colour of the rink from green to purple, cyan or randomise it.
Finally, you can also change the game length. What time measurement scale it uses I am not certain, all I know is the length is defaulted to 4000.
Choosing to play a single game takes you instantly to the game play screen, which I would assume is the developers 4 bit vision of a future rink. The sounds the game plays from here onwards are awful, sounding much like a dishwasher that’s going wrong.
The controls are standard, enter to shoot, arrow keys to move your player. It is not possible to change player in the game, and it seems to allow you to move whoever is nearest the puck. There’s no real passing system built in, so you just have to shoot the puck and hope that your player square picks it up.
The game will freeze on scoring a goal for a few seconds breaking up the game play, but besides that it plays much like every other poorly made and coded hockey, soccer, basketball, whatever sports game from this era.
The interface is hideous, and to make it worse you have the most unimaginitve sprites ever. A square with a circle inside it, and a donut shaped sprite plays the role of the puck. It is awful even by 1992 standards.
Playing the league option is exactly the same as above, except it shows a leaderboard before each game. It has space to 10 games, but I could never imagine anyone getting past 2, maybe even 1 without deleting the game from their system and lying to anyone about having ever played it.
Whats worse I think is not only does the game have lousy graphics, gameplay and sound effects, but such a cheesy and lame storyline about a futuristic hockey league originating in South America.

Screenshots

Conclusion

To conclude, this game is awful. Im aware its shareware, and I am aware the developer was only asking for $10 to register so you can recieve a floppy disk copy, but it really is awful.
This is just another example of the best things in life not being free.
In a time where graphics started to look acceptable and games started to become imaginative; this game really shows up how awful some games of that era really were.
Should you wish to find out how bad this game is, you’ll want DOSbox, and the game file, but first, tell me why!

Rating: 1/10 – Painful

Additional mentions
The game includes a short story of its history, which I found quite entertaining:

This game was first written under the imaginative name of ‘BALL’ in 1989,

featuring CGA graphics designed for monochrome monitors, delays only suitable

to slow XT computers and an internal ‘random’ routine that doesn’t work on

AT’s. Despite this, it was included in the ‘Best of 1990′ selection of the

Public (Software) Library in Houston, TX. Now, in 1992, the game has been

upgraded and runs nicely on any modern IBM PC compatible computer, with

greatly enhanced graphics and presentation (although the graphics are still

monochrome – but with varying color schemes this actually looks quite nice on

EGA/VGA color displays). It was written entirely in assembler (some 7000

lines).

In this review I will be looking at Ice Stars Hockey Lite – Available from the iTunes Application store, for the attractive price of “Free”. Notably there is a pro version of the game, which at the time of writing retails for 99 Cents US or Canadian, or 59p in the UK.

Ice Stars Hockey
Experience the “hottest” game on the iPhone claims the description. It describes giving you the ability to have variable speed, the ability to do one timers and the ability to hit other players.
You also have the ability to play a variety of mini games, alongside customising teams, music and the game speed.
It is worth noting that I am reviewing the “lite” version of the game, which has a 60 seconds time limit per game, and is more restrictive in allowing me to play the mini games.

(Menu Screen)

Presentation
The app’s icon is a simple cartoon profile of a violent looking hockey player, with a menacing grin. Its fairly attractive, and would be noticeable amongst your other menu items.
Depending on your Internet connection, the 36MB file shouldn’t take too long to download, obviously, if your doing it through 3G on your iPhone, or an even slower GPRS connection, expect it to take a while.
The game plays in landscape mode which obviously allows for full use of the screen, and the home menu is clearly laid out, with 6 options available to me, being “Play”, “Trophies”, “Stats”, “How to Play”, “Options” and a “Buy” button. These are spaced well enough apart for any user to be able to select the right option.
The menu graphics are nice, bright and crisp, relying heavily on a light blue colour. Teams are show by the jersey colour choice of either red, blue, yellow, green, brown or purple.

(Team selection stage)

Gameplay
The starting point for me with most games is the option menu, and with this game the options allow me to choose period duration (as this is the lite version its stuck at 1), The ability to turn Easy Pass on and off, the maximum fights per period (notably 1,2,3 or unlimited) and the ability to turn auto save on or off.
Also included is the game speed, pass speed, shot speed, the ability to calibrate your accelerometer, customise teams and audio settings.
Its worth noting that with the team settings you can choose your teams colour, names and location. Defaults are available, and the deafult names are tied to the original six teams – although I’m certain Chicago are not purple…
Moving on, the “How to play” section has quite cleverly chosen to use videos showing how to play the game – notably showing you – How to move, How to shoot, Face Off, Shoot-out (part 1 and 2), how to pass, opponent contact, brawl and a video guide on customising your game.
To play the game you must choose your preferred style of control, either with virtual buttons, or through touch and motion sensitivity.
Movement is made by using the virtual analogue stick that appears in the left hand side, or by tilting the unit in the direction of play.
Shooting is a little more complex depending on your choice of control, For a normal shot you simply flick the puck into the net or use the virtual A button, Tap the player for a power shot (or hold the A button), Double tap for a One Time (or double tap the A button), or you can hold for a power shot.
Passese can be made by either swiping the screen in the direction you want to pass, or by pressing the virtual B button. To hit a player you simply tap a player next to you (when you don;t have possession), or you hit the A button again. To fight, it uses a first person view and you simply tap the screen where you wish to hit the player.
Shootouts are nice and simple, with the option of choosing your pucks aim by tap, or if your on the other side simply tilting your unit to move the goalie.
I chose to play two games using both styles of control – Firstly, I chose motion.
Sadly, as much as I wanted to like the idea of motion controls, I found the response to be fairly sluggish, and it to be awkward to both tilt my iPhone and to shoot or hit a player at the same time. The up side is the CPU didn’t seem to be all knowing either, and the game ended at the 1st with a tie, and an advert to buy the full game.
Using the virtual buttons, the game was a little easier. It still seemed impossible to score a goal, and the CPU still didn’t manage to score against me. There was no fights (I assume they only appear in the full version) and no shootouts. I also could not find any way of speeding up the movement of my player – and in one instance where I thought a fight might occur, a strange scribbling affect covered the player, with the player being frozen (but glowing bright) red for the next 10 or so seconds.

(Top – Control Choice) (Bottom – Motion Gameplay)

Graphics
I liked the graphics. They were bright, cartoon style, 2d Graphics. It is a shame that they chose to make all the players look the same (excluding the goalie), however it does give the game a fun arcade feel. The on screen controls look good, with the virtual control stick actually being 3D showing your tilt of it. I had what I would call one graphics glitch, was the strange red player.

(Strange graphics glitch)

Lasting Appeal
The full version of this game features a few mini games which I would like to try, and I most likey will consider buying the game. I did feel the need to attempt several times to score and it was annoying only having the one period limit (something again removed in the full version).
I cannot see this being your favourite application, or one you use everyday – but its definitely a bit of fun to play if you have a few minutes to kill perhaps while waiting for a train, to get picked up or perhaps if you’ve arrived at hockey practice a little early.

(Advert in game for full version)

Overall
The graphics are clean, bright and fun. The game creators actually went out and made videos to show you how to use the controls, and the vision of a fun quick fire arcade hockey game has certainly been met.
However, the controls I feel mar the overall good experience of this game, with the motion controls feeling complexed, and the virtual on screen ones lacking responsiveness. Hopefully, future updates to the game will address the issues and then we will have the perfect hockey game for the iPhone.

Rating: 6/10: “Decent”

Try This App (Opens in iTunes)