Awesome concept, eh?
PlayStation 4
Released in 2017 by V7 Entertainment
Grade: D+
You gotta love this game’s style, eh. It’s the 70s, in a low-level minor league, where some of the venues are dimly lit local rinks with enough makeshift seats for maybe 100 fans. Most of the players don’t wear helmets, showing off their shaggy hair and bulky mustaches. The 10 fictional teams all reside in northern cities, and let’s just list them all out because I think they’re pretty cool, eh.
- Moose Jaw Farmhands
- Fort Edward Bluenosers
- Cobalt Silvers
- Les Voyous de Quebec
- Portage Lake Widowmakers
- Long Island Rumrunners
- Cascadia Timber Cats
- Charlestown Stonemasons
- Warroad Ice Anglers
- Schuylkill Hinto Brews
There’s a smooth, comic-book art style, complete with goofy nonsense like “Bang!” and “Crunch!” popping up after body checks. Fights happen several times a game, and there’s even a nifty mechanic where icons appear over players’ heads to indicate when they’re in the mood to throw down. Players who’ve taken too many punches can become shells of themselves by the third period, whiffing on passes and losing control of the puck.
It’s obviously a loving ode to EA’s 16-bit games like NHL ’94, and the default controls give you a familiar two-button system. Sounds cool, right? Okay, let’s drop the puck, eh!
And then, uh oh, something’s wrong, eh.
The gameplay just doesn’t cut it. The controls all have a horrible delay. The AI is dumb as a box of rocks. The players don’t have momentum, they don’t lead each other with passes, and the puck doesn’t ever glide or ride the boards.
The shooting and goalie logic is ultra simplistic. Even when shots are stopped, it’s hard to tell why. Did it bounce off the post, or was it magically kept out by the invisible wall next to the upright, motionless goalie?
The action becomes extremely repetitive. Make one or two passes to get out of your zone, and then just drift toward the net and shoot. You’ll rarely be stopped by a defender. There are no one-timers, and there’s no benefit to passing across the goalie.
And for a game that focuses so much on fighting, the fighting engine is totally lame. It’s a clunky button-mashing contest with lagging controls. Fighting gets old fast.
The game is souped up with a fairly creative story mode, where you jump into the middle of a dreadful season. Each game has particular tasks you need to complete, such as taking a certain number of shots or attacking a particular player, not unlike the franchise mode I loved in NHL Hitz 2003. But in a poorly conceived wrinkle, the CPU can “cheat” to push forth the story, which feels ridiculous given the limited gameplay.
There’s also a decent set of options, including “skill stick” control, one-handed “beer mode” control, icing, offsides, a couple different camera views, and thankfully, audio options so that you can get rid of the monotone play-by-play announcer.
It seems that a lot of thought was put into this game, but it’s spoiled terribly by gameplay that’s way too sluggish and simplistic.
I’m writing this in March 2022, and a version of Bush Hockey League is set to come to Nintendo Switch in April. I really hope that V7 spent the last five years overhauling the gameplay, because they’ve got a pretty cool thing going otherwise.