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Hey! Hey! Hey! It's Waaaaaaaayne Gretzky! Boy! With his name on the game you know it's got to be good. Well, actually, I don't know who the heck he is and I wish I didn't know much about this game. It bored me stiffer than a corpse left on an ice block.

The accent is firmly on simulation. (A bit of a bad move this, in my opinion, as done correctly ice hockey would make a great supra-violent action game.) Before matches the player can fiddle about with his team member's stats to his heart's content, training them up, booting duff players out and recruiting college rookies in. Chances are, though, that you'll not want to because all this stats jiggery-pokery is carried out on some of the drabbest menu screens I've seen this side of a spreadsheet.

The actual hockey matches are played out on top-viewed horizontally-scrolling ice rink, where tiny emaciated groups of pixels gyrate about in a vain attempt to simulate the ruckin' high-octane sport that is ice hockey. Even with the woeful graphics this could've been decent fun, but the poor control makes it feel like you're controlling somebody else controlling the players rather than being in the hot seat yourself.

Drab, dull and no fun to play, this is one hockey game that should be iced as soon as possible.