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Summer Athletics
Thursday, August 21st, 2008 by Nick Maunders
Out of the three seventh generation consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii) I have to say that the Nintendo Wii is my favourite. Although it has the worst graphics of the trio it has that unique style which hooks people in. So Beijing Olympics 2008 a massive event this year that will sure make a lot of money if turned into a game. The PC has it, the Xbox 360 has it, and the Playstation 3 has it, the Nintendo Wii ….. doesn’t have it. So you can imagine I myself am quite annoyed with the fact that I really wanted to play that game on the Wii and it won’t be coming out.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympics game is a brilliant game but I wanted to buy a less cartoon approach just like what they have done in Beijing 2008. So I searched everywhere and I finally found a game which I believed had it. Summer Athletics which is for the Nintendo Wii, (it’s also on the Xbox 360 which annoyed me as the Xbox already has an Olympic game). Well when I said I found a game I mean a game. Just one …no more. The trailer looked good so I thought I would give it a shot.
After playing it for 10 minutes I realised that I had wasted my £25. Although don’t take that the wrong way, this game is reasonably good …. it’s not rubbish … but it’s not great. I’ve carried on playing it for a couple of days and I still have the same opinion as I had before. This game is no where near as good as Mario and Sonic which really annoys me because that means that there will not be a proper Olympic game on the Nintendo Wii.
This game has quite a lot of the events that are on at the real Olympics and I was very excited because the Mario and Sonic game really made sure that athletic games on the Wii are brilliant. This game is just a massive let down. Some of the controls don’t even work and some will break your controller. I start with the good points though.
Hmmm … the games graphics are actually pretty good for the Wii; I think that is one of the games strong points. The multiplayer mode is probably the best part of the game but again that isn’t great. I can’t really think of anymore brilliant points about the game except for the fact that you’re giving your arms a lot of exercise.
Now for the bad points … where can I begin? One thing that really annoys me is the fact that sometimes after an event when you have to press “A” to move on it doesn’t work. You’ll spend 30 seconds repeatedly pressing the “A” button before it actually works. One event that will break the controller is swimming. The developers of this game haven’t really thought about the controls at all. For example backstroke; you have to move the nunchuk and wii remote backwards in a circular motion, easy right? Wrong! It won’t work which means you’ll try faster and faster, then because the nunchuk has a wire you’ll find yourself getting wrapped around the wire and if you don’t stop I suspect you’ll break the wire.
Another bad point is the cycling event. If you can actually win this please tell me because I can’t! The stamina runs out too quickly and before you know it your well behind the rest of the group. Many events such as the long jump have rubbish instructions, it says: “Move the wii remote and nunchuk slowly at first and then speed up gradually until you get to the fastest speed” Does it think the long jump is going to consist of you running up for two minutes or something? So you start of slowly and then speed up, then you go as fast as you can, how far does the speed go up? About 4/20 of the way. So you decide to go as fast as you can straight from the beginning, now how far? 2/20, this game gets 4/10 for control.
The game is okay the diving is an excellent part of the game which I enjoy so if you’re not that worried about buying a game that isn’t brilliant give it a go. However if you are then I would recommend that instead you buy Mario & Sonic at the Olympic games (unless you already have it) or even buy a new game that’s coming out such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed which comes out in September. To be honest 5 words DO NOT BUY THIS GAME it really is rubbish when I think about it. A very poor 3.5/10
