If it wasn’t for titles like California Games and Winter Games and Summer Games and World Games….. and Summer Games II, there would be a fairly substantial lack in mini-game titles in the world right now. These were a staple of every 80s kids gaming diet, and with some friends over enabled many people to appreciate the joy of group multiplayer gaming for the very first time. Type in your name, choose a country to represent and then take turns trying to best each others scores or times. We have a company called Epyx to thank for those memories, and it seems that because of them more and more developers have tried to take the torch and run. The problem is, it’s very rare for a game based on any of the world games events to actually knock it out of the park with a success. Sega is trying this year with Vancouver 2010……

Winter Olympics titles have always had a soft spot in my heart thanks to Epyx Winter Games back in the mid 80s. Me and classmates would sit around the Commodore64 and take turns laughing and enjoying even some of the menial games (cross country skiing). It was because of the nostalgia that I downloaded the Vancouver 2010 demo. Graphics were pretty good, the two events they chose were suitably impressive and thus my excitement for a new Winter Olympics game begun.

The biggest disappointment right off the bat was the inability to choose New Zealand as the country you want to represent. For the game to only include a handful of the countries that actually participate in the games means there will be quite a few eager gamers a little disappointed when they pick this up. It sounds rather trivial, but when playing online there’s always a feeling patriotism involved that has been sadly robbed from us NZ gamers. Never to fear though, I knew that with my experience with the demo I was about to enjoy some A class snow sports.

The game actually does a good job of representing the majority of the sports that will be on offer in this upcoming Winter Olympics (9 of the 15 sports are included, with a couple of variations for a handful of those). The only problem with having a game so varied is that you never really feel that there’s a solid game mechanic that flows throughout the game. One minute you’re merely timing some button presses, while other times you’re steering your skier down a slope at a blistering rate. But that’s the whole point of a mini-game title, varied gameplay over numerous events.

Some of the events are done well, incredibly so. They look great, they get the heartbeat going and there is satisfaction upon beating your times; the downhill skiing is one of those events. The only problem is that even when you find a sport that you’re enjoying, it’s shortlived due to the restrictions of the Olympic Games themselves. There is only one track for you to ski down, bobsleigh down, ski jump off or speed skate around. Once you’ve done it and conquered it, you’ve done it all.

The game itself is broken up into 4 different game modes: Training, Olympic Games, Challenges and Multiplayer. The training is exactly that, you can just redo events over and over to try and perfect your time/score before heading into a proper medalled event. Olympic Games is where you can choose as many events you want to go through, you get the single chance with no training and you get rated and hopefully given medals by the end. Multiplayer is exactly the same but you can choose to play up to 3 others on the same console, over PSN or via LAN.

While it’s nice to be able to jump online to compare your skills with others around the world, there’s a certain lack of pacing here. You have to watch your opponent doing their attempts for most of the events and this becomes tedious fast, especially if they’re really good. It’s nice to see that for the timed events (bobsledding, skeleton, luge, downhill skiing) you all go at the same time and your opposition is represented in ghost form. This makes the events a bit more of a joy to play through, and allows you to blast through a few more events in a faster time.

The best game mode, and probably the only reason to come back to the title, is a thing called Challenge Mode. You start off on the Easy Mountain with 10 events organised in a pyramid. Beat an event on the bottom of the pyramid and unlock an event above it. This is where the fun happens and you’re likely to stay. Suddenly the slalom becomes about not using up your style points (they’re lost by carving around flags or missing flags), the luge becomes about getting a certain average speed, and speed skating becomes an offshoot of the movie Speed (once you hit 30mph, if you go under….. you lose). Mix this with challenges that flip your controls or having to hit snowmen on your way down a slope and you suddenly turn the Winter Olympics into what gamers have always wanted from their videogames: fun!

Graphically, the game is sound. Some really nice animations and particle effects flood the game, with sense of speed only taking a hit when you jump into first person mode – sure it looks good, but you’ll go back to having the adrenaline that 3rd person somehow brings. The menu system is actually quite a pleasure to navigate. The only big downfall on the presentation comes in the form of the audio. Most of it is throw away sound effects and national anthems, but the music while you play seems rather limited and you’re likely to hear the same song numerous times in one playthrough.

Closing comments

Strangely, saying whether or not this is worthy of picking up is a tough one. It’s a fantastic template for what could be an awesome sequel…. but that’s another 4 years away. The challenge mode is where you will have your fun and it gives me a reason to go back into it, and if I go back into it, I’m less likely to sell it, which also means I have a high chance of pulling it out to play with mates. It’s not a terrible game, and it IS a mini-game title, but you might be hard pressed to get me to say it’s worth the $110 price tag. This game should be stripped of it’s seriousness and chucked into downloadable form at a downloadable price.

If you ever want to relive some of those fun moments from the 80s and find this in a bargain bin later on in the year, definitely pick it up for the challenge mode, and merely use the rest of the game to practice your techniques.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Playstation 3, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.