Good Old Hockey Game

Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name;
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!
- Stompin’ Tom Connors

This evening I got the opportunity to play some classic hockey on the Sega Geneses (NHL 95) and somewhat newer hockey on the original Xbox (NHL 2004, NHL 2005) at C2’s house. I then got to play some Wii for the second time in my young life which will be the focus of another post.

It was a blast to re-live my youth with hockey on the Genesis with it’s crappy controls and very pixelated graphics. It didn’t help that C2’s TV is like 50 inch wide screen or something ridiculously big. It is weird seeing teams that don’t exist anymore such as the Quebec Nordics, Winnipeg Jets, and Hartford Whalers and players that no longer play such as Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, etc. The game play is very slow, which wasn’t obvious till we moved up to NHL on the Xbox in which the game play was much quicker.

One thing the older hockey games had going for them was simplicity. With only 3 buttons on the Sega controller there was not a lot of options, it really boils down to a couple simple actions:

• Pass

• Shoot

• Change Player

• Body Check

I think there might have been a poke check or something but that never gets used unless your an “Advanced” player. When playing video hockey it is all about the hitting when you don’t have the puck and shooting/passing when you do. The Xbox controller has a lot of buttons on the top, two analog sticks, and 2 trigger buttons. Aside from the standard 4 actions listed above the buttons preform exotic actions such as:

• Block Shot

• Hook

• Spin Deke

• Hold Against the Boards

• Triple Axel Sow-Cow

The list goes on and on. Unless you have time to remember what all the buttons do you just revert to the 4 basic actions from old school hockey.

So designers of hockey games (I’m looking at you EA) make the 4 basic hockey actions easy to do and work fairly well. That way when a newbie like me is over at a buddies house I can have fun and be competitive without having to read and memorize the manual.

 

Board Game Inventory Day

 I added a list of the board and card games I currently own, check out the summary page for all the details. In my youth I was a big fan of games like Monopoly and Risk but in my mid-life crisis years I’ve started liking the so called “German” or “European” games such as Carcassonne and Settlers. These games tend have more strategy and a lot less luck. They are not mindless party games, but rather “mind-full” party games.

I’m also starting to like games where no one is eliminated half way through the game. Risk is a fun game but runs into trouble where someone is eliminated then has to sit and watch the remaining players for next 3 hours. Even in Settlers if you realize you aren’t going to win you can still play and make meaningful actions till the end.

For some interesting articles about games, ethics in games, why we play, etc check out The Games Journal.

New Game

I always thought my first “post” would actually be the About page but I just can’t seem to write anything good. I think part of the problem is I’m not 100% sure just what this blog will contain so I decided to just start posting and see what happens.

Part of the reason this blog exists was too allow me to track what games I play, how often I play games, and how much money I have spent (will spend) on games. Part of me thinks this is a bad idea. Reminds me of the first time a video game displayed how long I had been playing (it was an RPG but I can’t forget the name, probably one from the Final Phantasy series). At first I thought it was cool but then I thought about how much of my life I’d spent playing when I could have been doing other things. Good thing I was young, dumb, and full of fun so I kept playing.

Aside from the time I’m also worried that summing up the amount of money spent will also depress me and possible lead physical harm (insert obvious joke about the wife finding the money list). On a more serious note I will likely wonder if I should have spent it on our house, on my family, or maybe donate it to charities. Makes you think why you and I are so lucky to have be able to play games while other people are barely surviving. This is getting depressing, lets get back on topic and save this discussion for another day.

I figure the next couple posts will detail the games I own and how much time and money I’ve invested into each individual one. I’ll probably also say if I liked the game or not but I think full reviews will saved for a later date. I gotta save some material for later.