‘Family Glide Hockey’ Review (WiiWare)

Wed, Jan 21, 2009

familyglidehockey

Available on the Wii Shop Channel this week is "Family Glide Hockey," the second in Aksys Games' series of "Family" games for WiiWare. Can the same engine and characters from the moderately well-received "Family Table Tennis" transform yet another rec-room favorite, the air hockey table, into a game worth five dollars?

Meh.

Visually, "Family Glide Hockey" -- with its cel-shaded graphics, animé-style characters and candy colors -- lands on the saccharine side of cute, but remains relatively attractive. The five gameplay environments, each with a uniquely shaped hockey table featuring setting-specific, table-top obstacles, are surprisingly detailed, even if you only catch these details in the opening moments before landing at table view. Once there, the movements of the puck and mallets make for a fair approximation of air hockey. This is supported by the convincing "clack" sound that accompanies each bounce and rebound of the puck. Unfortunately, this effect is overridden by the often obnoxious music.

environments

"Family Glide Hockey" offers two game modes and three mini games. For the lonely, there's the Single-Player mode, in which you battle your "family" through the game's five environments. As long as you can avoid accidentally scoring on yourself (a classic element of air hockey) too often, a single-player campaign should take about ten minutes and is just as anti-climactic as playing real air hockey alone. If you're lucky and have a friend (or even three), you can opt for Versus Mode, which supports up to four local players with an unobtrusive split screen:

splitscreen

The game benefits from having real competitors in the mix, but, as you might expect, versus mode is only as fun or challenging as the friends you play. The three additional mini games -- Glide Hockey Brawl, Glide Hockey Tracer, and the standout Glide Hockey Drill, a surprisingly satisfying combination (think peanut butter and chocolate) of air hockey and math drills -- add an element of novelty, but ultimately run extremely shallow. You're unlikely to spend more than 5 minutes at a go on any of them.

drills

"Family Glide Hockey's" major failing is its gameplay. Air hockey seems a prime candidate for full use of the Wii's motion control capabilities. In fact, Wii Play's riff on air hockey, "Laser Hockey," features a perfectly intuitive control system where the movement of your paddle corresponds directly to the movement of your Wii Remote. "Family Glide Hockey" seems almost to ignore the Wii's motion control potential. In the Manual control scheme, the position of your paddle is controlled by either your nunchuck's thumbstick or Wii Remote's d-pad. In the automatic control scheme, the paddle is positioned (poorly) for you, all you control are sudden paddle jabs or power attacks. In either case, any waggling of the Wii Remote results only in a quick forward-and-back movement of your mallet.

If you're looking for a great air hockey game for Wii, this isn't it. Save your pennies for the magical day someone gets wise and "Laser Hockey" and "Family Glide Hockey" are combined.

Nintendo, Wii Play, Wii Shop Channel, WiiWare

This post was written by:

Marie Kare - who has written 152 posts on GameCyte.

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8 Comments For This Post

Chris Maguire Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
An air hockey game on the Wii that doesn't use motion control *exclusively*? Smells like gross.
Marie Kare Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
@Chris ... but there's MATH. Huh? MATH!
Zak Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Wow, just this morning I was wishing I could play air hockey with my family in an arctic aquarium.
janice Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
well, it LOOKS adorable, anyway. :/
Marie Kare Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
@Zak Did you wish you could do it with penguins watching? Because that's how it all goes down.
Marie Kare Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
@janice A little too cute for me, unfortunately. What I didn't mention is that every point is accompanied by cute little quips from family member to family member. And each mallet hit is accompanied by a cute little grunt. And power shots make cute little pictures flash across the screen. And sometimes cute little bunnies watch you play. And you cute cute bludgeon face cute bludgeon.
janice Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:50 pm
CUTE LITTLE BUNNIES?!?!?!

um. i'm sold.
Marie Kare Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 pm
@janice Yeah, alright. That part was pretty adorable.

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