NHL Hitz 20-03
Midway's surprisingly good check-heavy hockey game takes to the ice again. First impressions of this year's 20-03 effort await you.
Published: July 14, 2002
Last year's Hitz game managed to nab reasonable scores and its fair share of praise, helping to launch Midway's 20-whatever line of sports games. The second year of the Black Box-developed arcade hockey brawler is already looking like it will offer plenty to appease fans that thought the single-player game was lacking, while adding a few extras that should keep fence-sitters waiting to see if the game's worth a try a nudge towards a proper introduction.
Like most of Midway's next-year updates, Hitz 20-03 feels very much like 20-02, and while the game is still rather early (there's plenty of placeholder and temporary art, as well as a pretty crash-prone experience in the build we received last week), there are some enticing little additions that make things a bit more interesting than last year's effort, most notably the retooled franchise mode, which by itself manages to make the single-player experience much more engaging. Among the other tweaked and upgraded options this year are improved goalie AI (which already has helped quell the overabundance of wrap-around and one-timer goals that were so prevalent in the previous game), bigger rinks with more detailed full-polygon crowds, licensed music from bands like System of a Down, Stained and Moby, better mo-capped animations with two-man capture sessions for better collisions, more mini-games and a tournament mode borrowed from this year's Red Card and Slugfest games for up to 16-player tiered competitions.
The game largely plays the same, which is to say it's the same quick, check heavy three-on-three game that it was last year, but improved AI and play styles that are matched up somewhat with what you'd see in real life for respective teams. The announcing team has grown by one, so back and forth commentary is now possible, although not especially prevalent. Black Box apparently didn't think much was broken about Hitz's gameplay (and we're largely inclined to agree), so they didn't really try to fix it. On harder difficulty levels, it still feels like there's a rubber-band style AI scheme to keep the games close, something that seems to have stuck around from last year, but then with the improved AI the games are just more competitive period.
The biggest improvement, and the part of the game that will no doubt hook you if you're playing it by yourself will probably be the new franchise mode, which is broken down so that you're essentially taking a fictional team around the world to compete against opponents first in exhibition games, then world games, where you can earn new equipment to upgrade your stats. While playing the exhibition games, you're given a set of objectives which helps earn you experience once completed, which can then be used to buy higher stats. It feels much like an adventure/RPG game in the guise of a sports game, and while nobody will confuse Hitz with Final Fantasy, it does manage to turn something that would normally be just an extension of what you'd play with your friends, only with computer AI into something quite a bit more engaging.
There's plenty more that we haven't gotten into (hey, we've gotta save something for the review, right?), including the improved framerate (it's almost always 60 now, including during replays and close-ups), more fine-tuned controls and options for blocking shots and setting up fakes, more (and frankly better) mini-games and plenty more. With a couple months left to go, Black Box only has to make some very tiny tweaks before kicking out what could be a very, very serious source of loss productivity. If you're a fan of hockey, or just tend to gravitate towards Midway's arcade-style gameplay, keep an eye on Hitz 20-03.
Like most of Midway's next-year updates, Hitz 20-03 feels very much like 20-02, and while the game is still rather early (there's plenty of placeholder and temporary art, as well as a pretty crash-prone experience in the build we received last week), there are some enticing little additions that make things a bit more interesting than last year's effort, most notably the retooled franchise mode, which by itself manages to make the single-player experience much more engaging. Among the other tweaked and upgraded options this year are improved goalie AI (which already has helped quell the overabundance of wrap-around and one-timer goals that were so prevalent in the previous game), bigger rinks with more detailed full-polygon crowds, licensed music from bands like System of a Down, Stained and Moby, better mo-capped animations with two-man capture sessions for better collisions, more mini-games and a tournament mode borrowed from this year's Red Card and Slugfest games for up to 16-player tiered competitions.
The game largely plays the same, which is to say it's the same quick, check heavy three-on-three game that it was last year, but improved AI and play styles that are matched up somewhat with what you'd see in real life for respective teams. The announcing team has grown by one, so back and forth commentary is now possible, although not especially prevalent. Black Box apparently didn't think much was broken about Hitz's gameplay (and we're largely inclined to agree), so they didn't really try to fix it. On harder difficulty levels, it still feels like there's a rubber-band style AI scheme to keep the games close, something that seems to have stuck around from last year, but then with the improved AI the games are just more competitive period.
The biggest improvement, and the part of the game that will no doubt hook you if you're playing it by yourself will probably be the new franchise mode, which is broken down so that you're essentially taking a fictional team around the world to compete against opponents first in exhibition games, then world games, where you can earn new equipment to upgrade your stats. While playing the exhibition games, you're given a set of objectives which helps earn you experience once completed, which can then be used to buy higher stats. It feels much like an adventure/RPG game in the guise of a sports game, and while nobody will confuse Hitz with Final Fantasy, it does manage to turn something that would normally be just an extension of what you'd play with your friends, only with computer AI into something quite a bit more engaging.
There's plenty more that we haven't gotten into (hey, we've gotta save something for the review, right?), including the improved framerate (it's almost always 60 now, including during replays and close-ups), more fine-tuned controls and options for blocking shots and setting up fakes, more (and frankly better) mini-games and plenty more. With a couple months left to go, Black Box only has to make some very tiny tweaks before kicking out what could be a very, very serious source of loss productivity. If you're a fan of hockey, or just tend to gravitate towards Midway's arcade-style gameplay, keep an eye on Hitz 20-03.