HyperBlade - PC Review - Gamecenter

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HyperBlade
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CNET Gamecenter Review
By Hugh Falk
(12/3/1996)

Future sport is a subgenre of video gaming devoted to simulating futuristic team sporting events. Future sport games are favorites of mine, but anybody who started PC gaming within the last six years can be forgiven for not knowing any examples.
Hyperblade The greatest future sport title of all time, Speedball 2 by the Bitmap Brothers, was released in 1990 and has since disappeared into relative obscurity, along with the Amiga and Atari ST, which served as the best platforms for it. Other good examples of future sports are Cyberball, Projectyle, and of course the original Speedball.
However, none of these are new, and none of them are serious challengers for the Future Sport Crown, awarded every three years to the best PC future sport game by the Guild of Occidental Future Sports. As one of the head GOOFS, I personally fashioned the Future Sport Crown from a broken Atari 2600 joystick cover centered in an old Burger King crown (which might explain the lack of competition for it.)
Regardless, Activision's HyperBlade is the first real opposition Speedball 2 has faced for this coveted award, and it is certainly the best future sport game released in the last six years.
getting up on skates
HyperBlade is a team sport set in the year 2065. Teams consist of three main players (striker, defender, and goalie) and two substitutes. Tournaments are played in what looks like the inside of a Graf zeppelin littered with various hazards and power-ups. The object is to collect the ball (called a rok) with a sharp jai-alai scoop (called a jak). Players then travel the length of the course (called a drome) on skates (actually sharp chunks of kinetic composite) and use the jak to throw the rok in a goal (called a goal). Please excuse the preceding conglomeration of technobabble (called a paragraph).
Gameplay resembles roller hockey played in an elongated half-pipe. Movement is very much like roller blading. When players travel up the side of a wall, they can either catch air or ride the lip, depending upon their speed and direction. Although the graphics are crude polygons, the motion capture is perfect. Skating, flips, jumps, kick-outs, and victory dances are all ultrarealistic. If HyperBlade were nothing more than a skating simulation, it would be worth the money. Luckily, there is much more.

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