Casual Sport Series: Hockey

The gameplay is boring, you can't check opponents, the controls are delayed, and there is a typo in the team selection screen. Fairly low quality overall. I was hoping for a fun arcade-y hockey game and this isn't it.

[h1]Think Wii Sports minigame hockey[/h1] Given the name, as well as the price ($1.19 during a holiday sale), I knew this was going to be a very lightweight, arcadey kind of hockey game. I wasn't sure if that was going to mean something like NHL Hitz, Mutant League Hockey, Backyard Hockey, or NES Ice Hockey. Ultimately, it turns out the answer was more along the lines of, "if Wii Sports had hockey". Don't expect to have a lot of fine control in the game. The pace of play is relatively slow, and skaters have a good bit of inertia and a wide turn radius. Pair that with the crowded ice, and it means there's not a lot of room for skilled skating and puckhandling. Which, again, super casual game, but it means you have a lot less fine control than you do in those other casual hockey games I mentioned above. Backyard Hockey looks like a fast paced and highly skilled game by comparison. To help drive home the point, there's no difference between forehand and backhand in this game. Regardless of where the puck is relative to the puckhandler, a shooter will reposition the puck directly in front of them and take a wind-up slap shot when shooting. The decision to make the game 5 vs. 5 skaters as opposed to something like 3 vs. 3 is an odd one. For a game seemingly targeting super casual players, I expect having that many skaters packed into a relatively small play surface will lead to a bunch of "which guy am I?" confusion from the kind of not-so "gamer" players that this game will appeal to. You can't really throw a fit about shallow game mechanics in a game where they put "Casual" right there in the title. The point of this review is to alert potential buyers just how much they should be taking the game at its word. None of the Wii Sports titles ever did hockey, but I think that's the reference point that will help players understand exactly what level of "casual" this game is. And for what it is, it's competently made, hence the positive review rating.