So I Tried… Slapshot: Rebound

In each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour to see if this is the game for me, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do. This time, I tried out Slapshot: Rebound with my colleagues in our recent Streamcast! Will this game score a goal, or will it slip on the ice?

What I thought it was

One of the rules of our little Streamcasts is that we go into the game with as little information as possible, including skipping any tutorials to flounder as one big bumbling family! As such, I didn’t have much info to go on, but with the description and few screencaps I saw, I imagined a Wobbly Life or Human: Fall Flat type of experience. We’d have physics-based obstacles or hazards to avoid while we played an otherwise normal game of hockey! I also imagined there would be funny power-ups or something humorous like that.

What it actually is

Well, after playing the half-hour required, I can confidently say I was correct in my assumptions… kinda. Slapshot: Rebound was indeed a humorous physics-based hockey game, where we had to focus on a lot more than just flinging a puck into a goal. However, I was wrong in both my other assumptions and was definitely not prepared for the type of physics-based shenanigans we were in for!

It’s a bit hard to describe how the game played without experiencing it. Basically, you controlled your glorious hockey player with the WASD keys, which is to be expected, but you controlled your stick with the mouse! Move the mouse, and your skating striker spins around, hockey stick in tow, launching any small, disc-shaped projectiles (or other players) that happen to be near. This sounds like a logical system, but it was often hard to tell where the mouse was in relation to your character, resulting in a lot of lovely pirouettes instead of epic goal-making manoeuvres. This janky control was, however, part of the charm of the game and we had a great time trying to get to grips with it, finding out new mechanisms and controls, all while trying to get even a single goal. The charming graphics and silly energy of the game helped as well.

Will I keep playing

That’s a tough one. I don’t see myself playing this title on my own, at least, as the idea of taking on random other people is bound to be less fun with them scoring more goals than is rightly fair or proper! I would, on the other hand, be happy to play a round or three with friends every now and again, as the simple controls and clear action allowed us to both hyper-focus on the game or just chat at our leisure.

I felt I got the gist of Slapshot: Rebound within the first matches, so I don’t think it has many curveballs to throw, but I don’t think it needs them. It’s good fun with friends, it's free, and any bots you add to a game have silly names and are almost as useless as you! A definite addition to the party game pile but may not gather more than dust otherwise.