As has been the norm with sports games recently, Accolade's Brett Hull Hockey is on the shelves at exactly the wrong time.  The NHL regular season is all but over at the time of this writing, and the Stanley Cup will probably have already been awarded by the time this issue is dropped through your mail slot.  Is it SUPPOSED to happen this way?  I have this image in my head of thousands of happy consumers rushing out to buy the newly-released Brett Hull Hockey on Opening Day while Accolade's administrative staff drinks champagne and smokes cigars.  Unfortunately, it IS only a dream.

	 Not to say that Brett Hull Hockey won't sell boatloads anyway.  It's a good-looking, fun-to-play game ... MUCH better than Accolade's PC football game Unnecessary Roughness.  It boasts many of the same features as UR ...  real players and teams, season play with statistics galore, adjustable player attributes, and (drum roll, please) Al Michaels.  In terms of REALISM, though, Hull is more accurate than any previous Accolade game and perhaps any previous hockey game as well.  Players skate with noticeable speed differences and strong players pack more of a wallop when they hit than wimpy ones do.  It’s almost exactly what computer hockey should be.

	What keeps Hull ‘95 from being THE hockey sim to get?  Certainly not the graphics ...  they’re about as good as one could expect.  Like their rival, EA Sports, Sport Accolade now incorporates digitized photos and backgrounds into their menu and options screens.  As a result, games such as Hull and NHL ‘95 look a lot like television broadcasts, which I believe is intentional.  After all, don’t people WANT games that look like the real thing?  And not only that ...  some people like games which SOUND like the real thing, too.  Hull DOES sound like a televised hockey game ...  thanks to Al Michaels.  Michaels’ award winning play-by-play has been digitized and blended into Brett Hull Hockey exceptionally well.  “He” follows everything ...  from scoring to penalty minutes to team infractions.  When you pause a game by pressing ESC, Michaels tells the viewing audience (you) that a timeout has been taken and that “we’ll be right back.”  You’ve gotta love it.

	Actually, there’s really nothing bad enough about Brett Hull Hockey to discourage its purchase.  However, purists are sure to notice a few flaws in the AI.  Goalies, for instance, are allowed to hold a puck until members of the opposing team have cleared out of their zone.  If they hold it too long, a faceoff is required.  In the NHL, faceoffs of this sort are not too frequent, but in this game, they happen a LOT.  Also, a little fiddling with the skating and aggressiveness attributes (which you can do right before a game to surprise your opponent) will turn your team into The Breakaway Gang.  It seems a bit easy at times to skate past the defense, but scoring once you’ve done this isn’t any easier, so you probably won’t end up winning too many 25-0 games.

	I would’ve liked to have tried using a mouse to control my players, but alas, you’re options are limited to the usual keyboard vs. joystick vs. gamepad.  All three methods work fine, except for the fact that keyboard players must press the diagonal keys (1,3,7,9) to move diagonally (combinations of up/down/left/right don’t work).  At any time in the game, you can call a timeout and fiddle around with things like substitutions, game and player stats, and file management.  For some reason, saving a game immediately boots you back to DOS, but at least you can DO it.  It seems that Brett Hull Hockey could’ve used another round of beta testing to uncover some of these errors before the game went to market, but it’s no big deal.  You should buy and play this game anyway ...  it’s a Hull of a product.