Jamdat Air Hockey E3 2005 Hands-On Report

We got a chance to play Jamdat Air Hockey, a simple but fun game that will appeal mostly to casual gamers but offers a little bit for everyone. In Air Hockey, you can play the traditional game against the computer by yourself, or two players can each play the computer (and then compare scores) in pass-and-play fashion. Although there are three different difficulty settings, the gameplay is pretty consistent between them, as the objective is always the same: score more goals than your opponent. The controls are quite easy to get the hang of, since all the action happens with one button. Despite its simplicity, the game mechanic is quite interesting, because when you press the button to use your paddle, it detects and automatically goes after the puck...wherever it happens to be floating on the table. Since the paddles and puck float randomly, without your input, Air Hockey is always a little unpredictable, which seems to be pretty true to the traditional game of table air hockey. The greatest challenge of the game is being careful with your timing, as it's very easy to hit the puck directly into your own goal if you aren't paying attention. Again, this is consistent with physical air hockey tables, so the concept translates well to the mobile platform.

The game looks pretty good from what we saw, and it should be available this summer.