Post by MasterSandman II on Jun 16, 2010 18:24:39 GMT -5
NHL Slapshot Preview
[/center]Younger brothers and sisters of the world be warned: your older sibling will undoubtedly use NHL Slapshot's hockey stick peripheral against you. Thankfully for you, while it does look like a smaller version of a real stick, it's actually just made of foam, so feel free to whack your friends and family as much as possible. Of course, NHL Slapshot itself isn't about physical combat at all. Instead, it aims to deliver a fast and fun arcade hockey experience to Wii owners.
To do this, EA Sports is asking people to toss their nunchuk and Wii remote into the hockey stick peripheral that I just mentioned. The analog stick still behaves as you'd expect, but moves like slapshots, wrist shots and body checks are performed with the proper physical gesture. It works fairly well, but because of the lack of Wii MotionPlus, sometimes simply shaking the controller aimlessly works. There were also moments when the game would think I was going for a slapshot, when in fact I was going for a wrister. Things like dekeing performed well, though, with the B button enabling players to do some pretty fancy moves. Being that it's an early build of the game, I'm sure some of the lacking control mechanics will get tweaked and smoothed out before launch.
The structure of the game is very interesting in that players can choose from a set of four age groups (read: difficulty levels). The easiest is called peewee hockey and features miniature versions of pro players in three-on-three gameplay. Things move up to pro hockey which will be the usual five-on-five affair. This also translates into the game's career mode (aptly named Peewee to Pros) of sorts where you'll need to progress your players from peewee hockey all the way up to adult hood. Aside from that, NHL Slapshot will also include a Stanley Cup mode, a set of mini-games, and a single season mode. On top of that, Wayne Gretzky will be playable in the final version.
Despite some minor frustrations with the inaccurate controls, NHL Slapshot was actually pretty fun on Wii. It runs at a smooth 60 frames per second and has a cool art style to go along with the instant satisfaction of checking someone or scoring a goal. Slapshot is obviously geared towards younger gamers or those not interested in a hockey game like NHL 11, but I think even diehard hockey fans will be able to find something to enjoy if the developers at EA Canada can properly tune the controls.
NHL Slapshot is scheduled to ship on September 7 for Wii. We'll have more info in the coming weeks after E3.