Clusterpuck 99 Review

"Air Hockey Evolved"

Campaign

Being a regular Canadian I always fancy a game of hockey no matter the form of which the game is presented, except for field hockey since that's weird. Many players of the sport have had a history with Air Hockey in some form or another and Clusterpuck seems to be a natural virtual progression in that regard. The game of clusterpuck takes place on competitive tables and wild deadly tables.

These range from some comical shapes like minefields of spikes or the duke which is the original Xbox controller. The various pucks which can be real players of AI face off in a mad cluster of bash the puck around. Sadly there are no online components though the game works fine without that aspect. Teams can be a variety of real players and AI with up to five per side as they battle it out. Matches can get quite clustered with higher player accounts which I found highly exciting.

There's no campaign to speak of and the game mostly focuses around local quick play matches. If you're looking for more than that you can take on the various challenges also present within the other game mode. These vary from taking precision shots to playing goal keeper with the three star system on each of them. Additionally if you have some creative talent the game features a well designed make your own arena area. This area has a fairly decent assortment of colors, map types and general set-ups possible so you can create any sort of custom arena to battle it out on.

Gameplay

Simple movements present within Clusterpuck as you just move around the press the "A" button. The "B" button also does a bit of a charge up though it doesn't seem to do anything different then standard shooting so I just stopped bothering with it. Other than that you simply bump into folks knocking them off the map or into the mines which is largely done once more with "A" as you check them.

The game has some solid music playing in the background and the variety of maps was great. I also want to mention this game had some of the best menus I've come across on Xbox one so far, they're smooth and have a future-modern look to them.

The Conclusion

With the local multiplayer this game can be a fantastic with or without friends. While online multiplayer would have been great in the title Clusterpuck was honestly fine without it present. The game is simple so any individual should be able to hop in without issue and it's generally a fun experience.

The AI also plays like novice (young players) most of the time so you get hilarious trains of these mini circles chasing one another. I also liked the create a profile so your character would have a symbol on it to make it unique to you. Overall I definitely enjoyed the game and it definitely feels like a nice evolution to air hockey.

Clusterpuck 99 Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by PHL Collective

Rating Overall: 8.0