by Elton Gahr

Created on: March 30, 2010

Touch hockey is a game app for the iphone and the ipod touch which emulates an air hockey table though a bit smaller, and it gets the sounds and the feel of the game pretty much right on.

I have played a few games of air hockey in my time and every one of those games had one thing in common and that is that I scored on myself more often than I scored on the opponent. Often these scores were caused by bouncing the puck off the wall next to my opponent’s goal and then missing when it came back at mine or simply bumping it when it went by and having it disappear. I know that if you play more you can get to the point where most games are not won by who makes the least mistakes but I have to appreciate the accuracy of the touch hockey game that it made me feel just as stupid as the real life version.

The major weakness of this game clearly is the size of the iphone or ipod touch screen. This makes everything smaller and harder to actually use but it doesn’t feel that much different and I suspect it is because someone put some time into balancing it.

The obvious way for this game to work is to play the computer and it works reasonably well. The computer is not an impressive opponent but it knows enough to keep the paddle in the way of the goal most of the time and so it isn’t easy to simply score on, but it isn’t a very good opponent and if you actually know how to play I suspect it would be easy.

It is also possible to play with two people on the same iphone. This isn’t going to be easy in space but it could be fun for a few seconds and while I didn’t have anyone to play with I’ll tell you that my right had can beat my left hand very easily.

The third is that you can play over Bluetooth. I don’t have anyone to play with so didn’t try this but it is probably the best way to play as it would give both people room to actually play.

This is a fun and easy game to pick up and once that is worth at least trying for free because it actually lets you interact with other people which is nice.

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