Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98

"Less of a game, more of a vile disease."

Ah, ice hockey. The titans of the puck take it to the ice again in a thrill-packed, non-stop rush of a video game! Capitalising on the popular name of Wayne Gretzky, the game delivers all the thrill of a game of ice hockey! The fights, the skills, the excitement! …….
In theory, anyway. In reality, Wayne Gretzky 98 is a vile, vile disease. I’ve seen ice hockey, and this isn’t it. REAL Ice Hockey doesn’t move with the pace of snails. Real Ice Hockey doesn’t cause me to think hanging myself is a pleasant alternative.

This game is the sequel to Wayne Gretzky 3D on N64. You’d think, logically, that a sequel would improve on the flaws of the original, wouldn’t you? Of course, logic is a foreign word in WG 98. Not only does the game have all the flaws of the original, it’s gone out of its way to add more.

STORY: N/A
It’s a hockey game. You play hockey. No story, because it simply isn’t needed. I don’t know if they used real teams and real player names, because I don’t follow Ice Hockey enough to keep up, but I would imagine they probably did.

GRAPHICS: 3/10
When last I checked, ice hockey players weren’t badly constructed blocks of body, stuck together, with what could loosely be classified as a head on top of the torso block. The players are big, bulky, and completely unremarkable. Basically just a series of blocks stuck together, in different coloured jerseys according to their team affiliation.
Crowd animations? The crowd is a black sea behind the ring. At least, I think it’s meant to be a crowd.
The actual ring isn’t too bad, although it does seem ridiculously too small in comparison to the gigantic blocks that are the players.
The big fall in the graphics is the puck, mostly because it doesn’t have a graphic of “moving”. Whenever you hit the puck, it losses half of it’s already low frame-rate, and blinks in and out of the screen. Playing hockey with an invisible puck = mass frustration.
C’mon. A puck is a small black round object that moves when it gets hit. They’ve been animating them successfully for decades in video gaming. Yet, WG98 still can’t manage it. The graphics are, at their best, unremarkable, and at their worst, downright revolting.

SOUND: 0/10
If hearing a badly recorded “Uuh” grunt noise is your thing, you’ll love the sound on this game, because that’s about all there is. No music, no stick hitting the puck noise, nothing.

SOUND: COMMENTARY: 4/10
This gets its own section, since it’s really the only thing in the game of any value. The commentary is passable. Just barely. However, within an hour (assuming you’re even still playing then), you’ll be dead sick of hearing the guy scream “and here’s the POW-er play!”

GAMEPLAY: 1/ 10 (and that’s been generous)
The gameplay here is horrid. It’s vile. This game is the sort of thing you should threaten small children with if they refuse to go to bed; it’s much scarier than the boogeyman.
There’s dozens of options before you get out on the ice. You can pick which 5 men you want out there, check out their stats, put in a special formation…. It’s a sizeable list of options. Unfortunately, it all becomes rather irrelevant when you realise no matter what you do, it will not make even the slightest difference. Despite the stats telling you Player A is light-years faster than Player B, put them both on the ice, and they will move at the exact same rate! Your tactics and formations are irrelevant, as they break down 10 seconds into the game.
The most horrible bit about this game: It is far, far, FAR, too easy. A blind chimpanzee, in a wheelchair, with both hands tied behind his back, could beat the AI. Irregardless of the difficulty setting, you’ll struggle to be challenged. The huge flaw in the AI – As long as you are on offence, you will destroy the opposition. On the hardest difficulty setting, it’s a good bet the computer attackers will sneak through your defence and score, but it doesn’t matter as long as you keep taking shots at goal. One in every ten shots is a success, every single time. When you miss, it bounces off the goalie, and back to your player for another shot. Keep shooting, and you just can’t lose.

Which is kind of fortunate, in its own way. It’s good your player can’t miss, because the rest of your team is about as useful as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. They have all been programmed with “headless chicken AI”, which means they have to run around at random, never helping you. So never pass. Just skate it up to the goal, and keep shooting till you score.

I thought I’d found some good in the gameplay during the fight scenes. That’s right, foul another player enough and you get a real life hockey fight scene! Sadly, it’s as worthless as the rest of the game. You can’t lose this, either. It’s takes at least 3 straight minutes for the computers S-L-O-W jabs to knock you down, and you have to tap A+B, just once to use an uppercut for the KO. And it doesn’t matter who wins the fight, because both men are sent off and there’s no advantage to it been in the game at all. Hooray for non-fun pointless aspects of gaming!

Multiplayer is a disaster zone, too. You skate to the goal and put it in. Your friend has no control of his goalie or his defence, so there’s nothing he can do, until you score, he gets the puck, skates it back, and scores on you. This continues until
A: Your friend realises this is a bad game and you throw it out the window.
B: You both get nauseous, switch the machine off, then get entertained by melting the game over a slow fire.
C: You play till the end of the match. That’s at least ten minutes, and probably indicates you need your eyes checked, because you obviously haven’t worked out how bad a game it is.

REPLAY VALUE: 0/10
Once you turn the machine off, you’ll never some HUGE motivation to turn it back on. There’s the World Cup-esqe mode, where you go through a tournament to win whatever the major prize is in ice hockey these days. It’s basically just back-to-back exhibition games, and has all the fun of having your eyes pulled out with rusty fish hooks. The multiplayer would have fit in well in the Spanish Inquisition. Replay this game? You’ll be lucky if your N64 doesn’t chew it up and spit it out in protest.

BUY OR RENT?
Don’t rent. Don’t buy. The only redeeming value of this game is the joy you would get at melting it in a bucket of acid. If you absolutely feel you cannot live another moment without a hockey game, I beg you, buy it at EB, or somewhere with a good return policy (after buying this, I am very thankful for return policies). Even better, buy the original Wayne Gretzky 3D. It’s bound to be cheaper than this disgusting excuse for a game, if not better.

OVERALL: 1/10
Mere words can’t express how bad this game truly is. I’d rather be buried alive than face the horror that is Wayne Gretzky 98 again. No decent aspects of gameplay, badly presented, full of glitches…. Where’s the good? I got exactly 3 seconds of entertainment out of this, and that was from the Big Head code for it. The game has one use, and that’s smashing it into chips and using them to prop up wobbly tables.

This is not a game. It is a vile disease, designed and programmed by a sadistic mind in order to turn people away from video gaming. If you see this game in stores, back away slowly and don’t make eye contact. If people try to give it to you, for free, run away.

Wayne Gretzky 98 – It makes me long for the days when video gaming didn’t exist. It really is THAT bad. I can’t stress enough. Never, ever, EVER, go near this game.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 08/01/02, Updated 08/01/02