Outside of
the few great titles that land on PlayStation Portable, handheld sports games
are not too common these days. That likely stems from the overabundance of
garbage that was shoveled on the Game Boy Advance, a handheld that could barely
handle the likes of Madden or Tiger Woods. This has left Nintendo DS – which
will celebrate its third birthday this November – without many sports titles to
excite the gaming community.
Hockey has
been one of the most neglected genres. But thanks to an above-average effort
from Atari and Humongous, that could soon change. They’ve teamed up for another
Backyard Sports game: Backyard Hockey 2008. This version features the bells and
whistles DS lovers expect (3D perspective, touch-screen controls) while
delivering that anyone-can-play-it entertainment the Backyard series is known
for.
Sticking
to the Basics
By default,
this preview build of Backyard Hockey 2008 was set up for standard D-pad
controls. They’re decent for a handheld that doesn’t have an analog stick but
could use some work.
The touch
controls, however, are without a doubt this game’s best feature. Touch the
screen to bring up the puck guide, which is a small arrow cluster that moves
wherever you drag the stylus. Similar to the forthcoming Zelda game, the arrow
also gives you control over your player. Touch the screen and drag to steer your
player across the rink. You don’t have to lift the stylus until it comes time to
pass or shoot. But if you should lift your hand too soon, no worries – the game
is very responsive. Touch the screen again and your player will resume tracing
your every move.
To pass,
simply touch the player that you’d like to receive the puck. This is not a
foolproof method but works very well. It’s fast and generally accurate, and is a
lot of fun to execute.
Shooting is
conducted a little differently. Rather than tapping the screen once or twice to
swing the hockey stick (as you do in Zelda to swing Link’s sword), you touch the
on-screen button that reads “Shoot.” This is followed by a transparent,
nine-section box that appears in the middle of the screen. I’m assuming that
each section (three on the top, three in the middle, and three on the bottom) is
intended to represent a different point where the puck will be shot. Whether or
not that’s the case is unclear. Overall this build felt pretty complete, but
when it came to specifics, it seemed you could only influence whether the puck
shot left or right. And even that wasn’t perfect. Hopefully this will be ironed
out – perhaps with a better on-screen indicator – for the final product.
Those
looking to steal won’t have to put forth much effort – just run into your
opponents and the puck is yours. During shootouts, the controls automatically
switch to the goaltender when defending, in which case you can protect the net
by sliding (touching the screen) left or right.
Having
played and mastered numerous DS releases, this new control scheme wasn’t hard
for me to get into. In fact, my first try yielded excellent results for player
movement, and within 90 seconds of play I had scored my first goal. Scoring is
actually easier with the stylus than with the D-pad and buttons because you have
some control over where the puck will go. It also seems that the game may be
more willing to interpret stylus shots as being successful than those fired off
with a D-pad. Only time will tell if these two control styles will be balanced
out before the game ships.
Backyard
Hockey 2008 offers a fair amount of play modes, including Play Now, Pickup Game,
Season Play, and Multiplayer for two players. There’s an Extras mode with player
cards, which contain brief bios and stat information like shooting, passing,
skating, and checking. Last but not least gamers can explore the Mini-Game mode,
which features a touch-based version of Air Hockey, as well as two Shootout
games (pickup and play now).
Skating to a
DS near you early next month, Backyard Hockey 2008 looks like a winner for kids
everywhere. Young or old, you’ve never played a hockey game quite like it.
