Cons: Arbitrariness of the design barely makes the game worth playing
The Bottom Line: If you're really desperate for a hockey game, Hitz will do in a pinch, but don't expect it to fulfill your craving for true hockey action.
As I tend to mention repeatedly, I'm a pretty big hockey fan. I'm obviously a big fan of video games as well. As such, hockey video games are, figuratively speaking, my drug of choice. Having recently purchased a GameCube, I was naturally itching for a hockey game to play on my new powerhouse of gaming fun. As of launch, only one such game was available to quench my thirst for slap shots and hip checks, and that title was Midway's NHL Hitz 2002. The good news is that Hitz is still, essentially, a hockey game. The bad news is that it's developed by Blackbox Games, which produced the disappointing NHL2K for the Dreamcast. Despite this black mark on their reputation, I figured it's been nearly two years since NHL2K, so maybe Blackbox had a chance to clean up their act since then. No such luck.
Hitz is not your typical hockey game; it's classified as arcade hockey. Basically, if you've played NFL Blitz or NBA Jam, Hitz is much the same. It's basically fast-paced 3-on-3 hockey with no regard to the rules of hockey in general. There is no offsides, icing or two-line-pass, nor are there any penalties. Teams and players doing well can be "on fire", much like in the other Midway games.
Basically, this is hockey in its simplest form. There is shooting, passing, and checking, and that's more or less it. If you're coming to Hitz looking for realistic hockey action, with strategies and line changes and, well, rules, Hitz is very much not for you. Hitz is much more an arcade sports game that happens to be hockey than a hockey game that happens to be arcade-style.
Control is fairly standard as far as hockey games go. A passes, B shoots, and X and Y spin and cover the puck. On defense, A switches players, B body checks, and X and Y perform other attempts to steal the puck. Basically, each of the evasive maneuvers cancels out one of the checks, so the game becomes a glorified game of rock, paper, scissors. The faceoff is even more blatant about this simplification; the game actually explains to you that each of the three draw buttons beats one of the others.
What’s worse, this arbitrariness extends to the gameplay at large. In a game I played this evening, I scored three goals in the first minute on the toughest difficulty. Then the rubber-band AI kicked in. That last sentence should strike fear into the hearts of hockey fans everywhere. Basically, once you’re a couple of goals ahead, the computer team becomes a force of supermen until they’ve narrowed your lead to one goal or tied it up, then they go back to being lazy again. Sure, it keeps the games close, but if you basically know the outcome before you turn on the game, what’s the point of playing in the first place?
Goals are similarly arbitrary. You can set up the most perfect shot in the world, and that’s still no guarantee that it’ll go in. On the other hand, in my first game, I accidentally hit the shoot button from inside my own defensive zone and the puck sailed right in. So skill really doesn’t factor into your performance in this game. Granted, one-timers increase your chances of scoring (and are encouraged by the game, rewarding you with setting your team “on fire” if you get three consecutive one-timer goals, which is, sadly, not as difficult as it sounds), but that doesn’t take away from the arbitrary nature of the goals.
Much has been made of Hitz’s fighting system. Unlike EA’s NHL series, which has a fairly bland fighting system with no real incentive to fight, Hitz has a fairly deep fighting system, by hockey standards. There are two strengths of punches, plus you can grab, dodge, and block. It’s not Street Fighter, by any stretch of the imagination. Heck, it’s barely Pit-Fighter. Honestly, it’s not that big of a deal; the dodges and blocks just kind of stretch the fight out more. The only thing that really sets Hitz’s fighting apart is that the loser is benched for the rest of the game. Again, this seems like another arbitrary way to keep the game “fresh”; since there’s no control over starting fights, you can’t use any strategy to try to take out a particular player if he’s giving you trouble.
Graphically, Hitz is extremely average. The game moves at a good clip, but the default camera view is too far back to show anything particularly detailed. When the camera does zoom in, the faces are ugly. This is not hockey player ugly, but just plain nasty looking. I think I was barely able to recognize Patrik Elias up close, and he’s the kind of guy you can easily pick out of a crowd. There’s no slowdown that I noticed, which is good for this kind of game, because an arcade style game should go as fast as possible. All in all, the game doesn’t look bad, but it’s nothing particularly exciting; you won’t find yourself oohing and aahing like you would over other GameCube games.
Sound is appropriate, but also not overly exciting. There’s some good music tracks, such as Limp Bizkit’s “Rollin’”, which serves as the game’s theme song, but that music is only reserved for the title screen and in between plays, so you rarely hear more than a second or two of music in the actual game. Other than that, most of what you hear are generic hockey noises (slams, sticks hitting the ice or each other, etc.) and the announcer’s voice. The announcer, in my opinion, tries way too hard to be macho; he shouts at the top of his lungs constantly, and rarely has any meaningful commentary. At best, he’ll shout out one-liners like, “Hit me, baby, one more time!” At worst, he’ll just shout meaningless drivel that really adds little to the gaming experience.
In short, if you’re a big hockey fan, Hitz will likely disappoint you, especially if you’ve ever so much as seen a realistic hockey game. There’s just too much wrong here to keep you entertained for more than a day. If you are generally mystified by conventional hockey games, Hitz may be more your speed, because you can concentrate less on the rules and more on the basics. Even so, despite a number of extras like wacky stadiums and teams to unlock, there really isn’t enough to NHL Hitz to make it worth a purchase, especially because the rubber-band AI, as well as other arbitrary features, make the game simply anticlimactic in the end. Rental is definitely the way to go here, and even then only if you’re in a serious need to quench your thirst for video hockey. Otherwise, wait for a good hockey game to come out for the GameCube, and leave this poor excuse for a hockey game on the shelf where it belongs.
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