Flick Hockey

Flick Hockey – Arcade Air hockey action at your fingertips

As a long established fan of the gaming arcades it comes as a mixture of relief and panic to see a decent attempt of air hockey emulated on the iPhone/iPod. Relief as it’s not always easy to get down the arcade and knocks the socks off the previous efforts seen, and panic as it knocks another potential nail in the games arcade scene’s coffin. Fortunately as great as this hockey game is, it’s not quite as good as the real thing – but what it does do, it does very, very well indeed!

You are given the choice of three difficulty level settings for your computer opponent. The most basic opponent will normally miss most efforts and prove pretty ineffective at hitting the puck goalwards. The middle setting provides a bit of a challenge, hitting more and blocking more and throwing in the odd surprise to keep you on your toes. Of course, the hardest setting will challenge even the more hardened ‘hockey’ player.

As you would imagine, you use your finger tip to flick the puck around using the round ‘paddle’. Swiping your finger upwards will push the puck away from you and towards your opponents end. Similarly, moving the finger from side to side will deflect or push the puck in that direction. If you take your finger off the screen your ‘puck’ will stay in place, however if you put your finger back on the screen, it will jump to that position which did prove costly for me on the odd occasion.

Unlike the real game, where if you can use your height advantage by leaning more than half way and blast a shot at your opponent, you can only move your paddle to the half way line! Although this is fair, it does take out the usual fierce movements you usually associate with the game, and therefore some of the fun and unpredictability.

I did find that on some occasions the puck still got through my blocks when I clearly had put my paddle in the way, so it did have the odd glitch. However, in a bizarre way this made the game a little more challenging and entertaining too.

So is this the end of the arcade game scene? Not quite, but it sure does help let off some steam after a hard day at the office. I just wish you could pick higher numbers of goals than the first to 3, 5 or 7 available to make the games last longer.

Positives

Pretty realistic

Just as entertaining as the real thing

Good graphics

Negatives

Controls are a little sketchy occasionally

No way to alter the appearance (no option to unlock features)

You can’t play opponents via Bluetooth or wifi

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