My heavens, what a revolting piece of shit this game is.

Before I delve into just what makes Hit the Ice so offensive, let me say that I like quite a few "wacky" sports games. No "true to the real life clipboard" Madden play is as enjoyable for me to execute as a ridiculous 100-yard heave in Tecmo Super Bowl. I can abide few boxing games but totally dig Mike Tyson's Punch-out! And I spent many a multi-player get-together swishing threes and performing insane slam dunks in NBA Jam. In fact, were Hit the Ice the hockey equivalent of Jam, or something even remotely close to that, I probably would have penned a far more positive opening line for this review.

But it didn't quite turn out that way. It is indeed a "no holds barred" game of hockey; but unfortunately, it has practically no personality and requires virtually no skill. It can be fine for a sports game to chuck realism out the window, but the game had better be charismatic and it had better not be a snoozer gameplay-wise. Hit the Ice is as uncharismatic as they come; it takes more than an octopus-on-ice to bring a smile to my face, especially when the hockey "action" is as simplistic and tedious as it is here (there's a lot of back-and-forth "checking" with occasional weak shot attempts). In fact, sad-sack TV Sports Hockey, with its earnest but failed attempts at realism, arguably has more personality than Hit the Ice, as it features a gap-toothed announcer and nice-looking closeups. Heck, I get more of a kick out of TVSH's goofy player "portraits" than I do out of Hit's caricatural cast.

As if it isn't bad enough that Hit the Ice is a complete bore, it bears additional methods of repulsion in its disgustingly plain and ancient-looking visuals and laughable sound effects (which include lazy crowd whistling and annoying, all-too-frequent player "grunts").