🚀 go-pugleaf

Ho everyone.

Let me first start by saying overall I really like this package and 
EA has done a very good job in capturing the 'feel' of hockey.  I've 
held out with EA's NHLs and stuck with WGH3/HLS2 until this one, and 
I'm pretty impressed so far.  (GREAT MUSIC!  EA?  Will there be a 
soundtrack? ;-))

I will not venture into a review here, basically it's been pretty much 
covered, but I do have some passing disappointed comments on the modem 
portion of the game.  First, glad it's in there and I probably would have
bought the program anyway, so I am trying to bring myself to say it's a 
welcome bonus and leave it at that.  But I just can't do that :-( because
it is there and it's fairly cut-and-dry on what you can do.

At first when I heard the rumor of modem, I got really excited and thought
of 20+ plus human owned teams competing in a league format with all the 
bells and whistles of single player mode.  GREAT......

Then I was winded a bit (after a whole group of us were just chomping at 
the bit to purchase the game) to discover upon opening the box and reading
a bit of the manual that it seemed it was only to be Exibition Play.  :-(
Not so great, but maybe workable still with pen and paper and have the CPU 
quick-sim computer vs. computer games and generate player stats etc. to 
update the league manually with a spreadsheet program or something.  Still
potential.  Then......

I discovered the knock-out punch :-(  Not only can you *not* adjust lines
or starting goalies for games over the modem, but it fails to generate
any form of post game player stats for one to look at, let alone print
out!  Why?  The "Game Stats" are being tracked so they must be there
somewhere, but they are not presented to look at.  This was the sealing 
fate for a work-around for a league of exhibition matches I'm afraid.

Maybe I can still work something out with HLS2 and manually input at least the 
goal/assist records for all human vs. human games, but other than that it's 
turned out that all that can be really done is a season with just bare
wins/losses/points for the team can be tracked with ease.  

I here-by make a plea (beg if I have to) for EA (or some adventurous hacker
out here :-)) to devise a way to add a bit more depth to the modem play
experience.  At LEAST give us access to end game player stats and the 
ability to adjust lines and starting goalies if nothing else.  I would 
really prefer EA to address this and create a modem league option where 
all the teams could compete as if it was set to one player mode, be-it as
a patch or an upgrade.  I know a few of us would be willing to chip in 
a few extra bucks for this option.  I suspect this'll be a '97 thing, but
I'd like to see it now.  Can't the necessary data for league play be 
swapped from machine to machine during link up/synchronization?  So what if
it takes 30 sec. or more, the thrill of a real league with some factions
being human controlled or all human controlled (head to head via modem)
would be very much welcome.

Thanks for reading, but again I'd settle for a simple stat dump from the 
modem to modem game of the players at this point and work the league out
with papaer and pencil if necessary.

Comments?  Can someone get this forwarded to EA-Canada?  I wish they 
could see this.

--
Christopher Goucher             
E-Mail [go...@ra.isisnet.com  ]       "Bury it!.... then Bury the Shovel"  
or     [af...@cfn.cs.dal.ca   ]                                     -- "Coach"