NHL ’98

If you look closely, you can see a rough abstraction of two breasts, each impaled on two railway spikes, which is something I'd rather look at than this game.

This is the last N sports game I have to review.  Words cannot express my gratitude.

It is also difficult to express with words the extent to which I do not care about sports.  Typically, such an expression would involve – nay, require – strained, gurgling noises emanating from my throat, a contorted, purple rictus of enraged apathy, and a disturbingly enthusiastic series of self-inflicted blows to the head.

My disinterest in sports has moved far beyond mere absence of interest, into a kind of aggressively negative interest.  It is the same kind of negative interest that your girlfriend has in video games – the kind that is slow-roasted in a fine blend of resentment, boredom, contempt, pity and despair as people all around you converse excitedly about something you find profoundly, infinitely uninteresting, excluding you from any conversation or social interaction because they want to talk about statistics, whether it’s how great their new purple broadsword is, or how many assists John McHockeyton verbed in the last noun of the more general noun.

As such, I literally – yes, in the literal, denotative meaning of this upcoming sentence – feel minor headaches and nausea when I play a sports video game that is attempting to be authentic.  I am physically affected by it.  It repulses me.  Hockey is probably the worst, as it is the least interesting sport that is the most well-liked amongst my Canadian brethren.  Football I have occasionally felt a flicker of interest in, but as soon as a game reaches the playbook and little scrawls with symbols and arrows I just want to scream and scream and scream until there is nobody left to look at me or talk to me or touch me, ever again.

I have been to a hockey game once, for free, but it was a bizarre circumstance, a malformed half-baby mewling in its own fluids, birthed from a combination of artistic talent, lust, guilt, shame and obligation.

I played this game for three minutes, and it hurt my brain.  There is real physical pain in my skull. I hate this game more than racism.  I would rather drink a tall glass of vinegar than play this game for half an hour.

In conclusion, fuck your hockey team, they are probably worse than the hockey team that you do not like because they beat your hockey team that one time in the past when they were likely composed of entirely different players, or whatever.