With the Summer Olympics growing ever closer, it?s once again time to delve into the time-honored tradition of Olympic themed video games, this time coming to us from the fine folks over at SEGA. And guess what? It?s actually a pretty good game, which is probably more surprising than it should be.
SEGA has obviously been getting their feet wet with other Olympic titles as of late, notably the Mario and Sonic series that?s seen some success on the Wii, DS and 3DS. But this title, London 2012, is all business, in the Olympic Games sense at least.
London 2012 is filled with events taken straight from the games, with a lot of noteworthy additions that you?d expect to see, like Diving, Javelin, 100 Meter Dash, and so on. And then a number of events that I literally had no clue were even in the Olympics, like Rapid Fire Pistol. All together there are over 30 events included, a handful of which showcase both Men and Women, while others are restricted to one gender.
For multiplayer modes, you can opt to tackle events individually, or you can try your hand at the Challenge mode. In Challenge, your group is tasked with earning a number of stars for three different events, and gaining the requested number of stars will unlock the next set of three events to try out. It?s actually a pretty tough experience depending on the skill level of the people around you, but makes for a more satisfying experience than just playing through the events one on one.
This review is based around the 360 version of the game, which does come with some Kinect features as well. Unfortunately, I wasn?t really wowed by what the Kinect brought to the table here. The implementation felt a little clunky, with your standard menu navigation being relegated to moving an on-screen hand prompt as opposed to being more custom built for the accessory.
And using the Kinect to play the events was iffy at best. Certain events worked fairly well, but other more precise things, like Archery, seemed to suffer quite a bit. I had little to no trouble aiming my bow, but getting the arrow to actually release and fire my shot was something that barely worked half of the time. Even after adjusting calibration and lighting, and being sure to give myself ample room, nothing really changed on that front. If you?re interested in picking this up strictly as a Kinect experience, I?d definitely urge a rental before doing so.
The gameplay is also of perfect length for a party game. Most events don?t last much more than a minute or two, and loading seems to be kept at a minimum, even without the game installed to the hard drive. Again, this is a much better experience with a group, but I think even the single player portion of the game is worth checking out.
So I?d venture to say that SEGA has managed to deliver a really fun, fairly precise Olympic experience this year, and if you have any sort of interest in the Olympic Games, you should probably check this out. It?s definitely one of the better Olympic or Track and Field style games I?ve played in recent memory (outside of the mascot stuff), and is well worth your time.
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