6:20pm Thursday 4th February 2010
By Ian Crump
Genre: Sports
Platform: PlayStation 3
Publisher: SEGA
Classification: 3 (PEGI)
I'M sure that most people have had enough of the ice and snow outside. Vehicles are like sleighs out on the |icy roads and pedestrians perform acrobatics like they were in an episode of Dancing on Ice. Then of course there's the fact that it's been colder than a brass suppository.
We really could have held the Winter Olympics here this year.
Unlike the real Winter Olympics, the official videogame of Vancouver 2010 only offers 14 different sports, and although it could be said that developers Eurocom were concentrating on shaping those up to be the best that they could be, many of them play in pretty much |the same way.
The bulk of the game, ten events in fact, are a small variation of the same thing – throwing yourself down an icy hill or pipe. Things change in the fact that you may be on skis, a snowboard or on a luge, but that’s about as far as it goes.
The other four events that provide |a significantly different methods of gameplay are Aerials, Ski Jumping, 500 metres short track speed skating and then the 1,500 metre version of the same thing. But none of these have the ability to be gripping or, for the most part, particularly interesting.
The Challenge mode packaged within though gives gamers a selection of quirky targets and criteria to meet. Skiing down hills with reversed controls feels strange, but is absurdly fun.
With a weak, limp and completely droll Olympic mode, Vancouver’s only saving grace is its challenge mode.
Like with many people on the ice recently, SEGA have slipped up big time.
SCORE: 3 / 10
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