An ice hockey game from Iguana

Original N64europe Review

First off let me preface this review with the fact that almost everything I know about video game hockey I learned from playing EA's NHL 94-96 for SNES and NHL Powerplay for Saturn.

GRAPHICS

The graphics in NHL Breakaway are a mixed bag of good and not so good. First of all the initial setup screen and the options screen are nice, but not as nice as QBC, obviously because they are not in hi-res, but why not? It would help the preliminary screens to be in hi-res. The team select screens, are average or less, mainly because the team logos are small images that are blown up and then anti-alaised, which gives them a slightly fuzzier look than I care, but if the in-game graphics are good, then who cares, right? Right, during actual gameplay the polygon graphics are good. The shortcomings are with the 2D graphics. The ice looks ok, but not great, the most glaring thing you will notice is when the puck is dropped at center ice, the team logo is fuzzier than a care bear, and thats fuzzy, but as soon as the camera moves into playing position that just doesn't mater. The on-ice players look great, as you would expect, they have sharp outlines, no seams, and the collision detection is right-on, very nice. Speaking of collision detection the animation is great players fly very realistically when hit and loose equipment if hit hard enough, great touch. The shortcoming is when players leave the ice for some reason, i.e. penalty, line change, etc. they turn from individual polygons into one generic sprite of a guy sitting on the bench this is weird looking, but not too bad. The crowd is standard 2-D crap, the same as most sports games, no movement no variation. Overall good, but a few touches will greatly improve the realism in NHL Breakaway '99.

SOUND

Once again there is good and not so good. The intro MIDI music is generic techno crap. The US National anthem played at the begining of the game is nice, but if you listen to it more than once you are weird. The in game organ music is bad, and should be turned off, because it comes on at the worst times, right in the middle of play the organist starts going off for no reason. The announcer is good, you have to go into the options, and turn him "all the way up to eleven", but if you do this he sounds good. The crowd is too loud, so I turn it down to hear the announcer, but it works well, lots of boos when you trap a guy in the corner and hold him while your team mate hits him if you are away, and corresponding cheers when at home. Sound is good.

GAMEPLAY

There are a few issues concerning the rules of ice hockey. First and most annoying is the offsides issue. From what I understand about hockey, you are NOT offsides if you take a slap shot from behind the blue line, but according to this game you are, and that sucks, because your team mates, do a fine job of not going offsides which is good, but if the refs call it offsides to shoot from behind the blue line then that makes it impossible to play the game with offsides penalty turned on. You can dump the puck in the zone, but you can't shoot. Next issue involves the AI, if you turn the automatic line change on then you never know when you are going to be controlling a player who is heading for the bench for a line change, and you suddenly can't control him any longer. And they make line changes at the worst possible time. If a penalty expires, and the other team gets a breakaway, and your guys all head for the bench for a line change, guess what? You are left with 1 man on the ice for defense, and he is the goalie. This leads to an almost automatic score. And that is bad. Turn off auto line changes, otherwise bad things will happen.

CONTROL

This is neither good nor bad, just something that will take a few tries to get used to. There are a lot of buttons to remember. After 3-4 games you will get the hang of it. The result of so many buttons is that you figure out the few that work the best and use them the most. When I go after the guy with the puck, I don't have time to decide which kind of check to use, I just want to knock his ass to the ice and get the puck. The analog stick works great, but it is suprising the moves you can do without falling down.

OPTIONS

I like to save the best for last. What makes this game really rise above your average hockey sim is the options. If you don't like getting called for offsides for shooting behind the blue line, then turn the offsides off. If you don't like the organ music, the turn if off. If you don't like having your team run to the bench for a line change at the worst time possible then turn it off. If you find yourself scoring double digits, then make the goalies harder. I suggest hardest level of play and hard goalies, this is the most realistic. There are so many options you can tweak that you can turn an average game into a great sim or a great arcade-style game. There is a create a player option that I have only looked at a little, but it looks cool if you have time to mess with it.

My impression of this game is that it is a first generation title for the N64, so why in the hell did it take almost a year and a half after the introduction of the console to come out, this title should have been out 10-12 months ago. Waiting to see if a console is going to take off before making a game for it is a sh*tty thing to do to loyal gamers waiting to play "real" hockey. I can't explain how pissed off I am that this title wasn't available last year.

One important side-note. To owners of the NIKO super ultra combination rumble and memory pak, which by the way I would recomend to everyone as a great device, it seems that Breakaway thinks that the memory in this little gem is corrupt so everytime you boot this game it wants to fix the problem. It can fix it and you can use it, but as soon as you reboot it wants to fix it again. I can't explain this glitch, but it is a big hairy problem if this is the only memory pak you have. You will have to get a different memory pak.

- By Eric Anderson