I’ve been neglecting The Social Gamer. This past weekend I was able to play an Xbox Live Arcade title called 3 on 3 NHL Arcade and thought it would be good to write up a quick review about it.

On Saturday night I popped my cherry with my first Xbox 360 system link “LAN” party. We kicked off the party with some Gears of War 2 Horde Mode, but when the 5th member’s wife came to pick him up for beddy time, the rest of us congregated on one TV and played 3 on 3 NHL Arcade.

I know it’s been out since February, and I did play the demo a few times but hadn’t thought of the game since. If you’ve ever played an EA Sports NHL 0X game the menus and controls will be familiar to you but what you will immediately notice is the menu sounds; “blorp”s and “woooooosh”es amusingly help you make your menu choices.

The teams can be made up of players from either conference and features a few select stars from each team. You’ll want a well-rounded team but bigger guys deliver more punishing hits. From there the game is a no rules, power-up riddled, game of shinny hockey. There are no face-offs other than at the beginning of each period and after each goal the puck is put back into play behind the net of the team that was scored on. That, however, does NOT mean the team that was scored on will always get the puck as I was able to easily grab the puck for a quick wrap-around goal multiple times.

You can read the rest of the article over at The Social Gamer.