I’ve always been a fan of the Winter Olympic Games.
Sure, plenty of superb athletes strive to be faster, higher and stronger in the summer games, but the speed, the finesse and the skill displayed in the winter games is much more thrilling — perhaps because the wipeouts are truly epic when they fail.
The E-rated “Vancouver 2010” from Sega tries to capture some of that action for those who prefer to experience it on a warm sofa instead of a cold mountain.
The game offers 14 events — more or less. It actually offers just a few basic events — downhill skiing, freestyle skiing, ski jumping, short-track speed skating and bobsled. Some other activities — slalom, snowboarding, luge, skeleton — differ only slightly from the primary events.
No, there’s no figure skating, biathlon, cross-country skiing, hockey or curling. I can understand excluding hockey since it’s already covered by an excellent game. However, adding one of the others — perhaps a goofy little curling game — would have broken up some of the monotony. Of course, being “The Official Video Game of the Olympic Winter Games” probably prevents Sega from making anything goofy.
As it is, the limited selection of events leads to limited game play opportunities. Playing solo gets dull pretty quickly. Everyone’s played downhill skiing games a zillion times, and how many times do you want to stare at the bobsled/luge/skeleton track? Same goes for most of the other events.
The game is a lot more fun when you invite hyper-competitive friends to join the action. The game allows up to four to compete at a time.
The controls are pretty easy to pick up — primarily hitting a button to gain speed and using the joysticks or triggers to steer. However, they aren’t always intuitive — which I learned when my “expert gamer” friends tried a few events without checking out the tutorials or instruction book.
The graphics are OK — but portraying spandex-clad bodies hurtling along white backgrounds isn’t that hard to pull off. And there isn’t much variety in the wipeout animations.
Overall, “Vancouver” is a pretty basic winter sports game. No gold medal here.
Platforms: Xbox 360 (tested), PlayStation 3
On the Web:www.sega.com/games/vancouver-2010/
