Sega held another blogger’s day this week, like the one we were at in August for Sega Rally. This time we got to play Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Despite being a real-world tie-in, this is a bloody good game.

It’s officially approved by the Olympic committee for the upcoming Beijing games. They had a lot of influence over the gameplay and their input helped ensure that this isn’t the crappy Wii Sports clone it could have been. Wii Sports is a great game but its lack of depth means that we rarely play it unless we have visitors. It’s just not that engaging compared to… well, pretty much any other game we own.

The Game

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games has over 20 different Olympic sports to play. They’ve chosen a good range of them, too. You have the basic track and field events, like hammer throw, triple jump, sprints, hurdles and relays. There’s also skeet shooting, trampoline, archery and a bunch of swimming and gymnastic events. To top it all off you can unlock Dream events which use the skills you learn from the Olympics and drop you into a more traditional Mario/Sonic fantasy setting. And yes, there is a sprint version of Mario Kart so you can get your fix of cheating flinging lightning bolts at your friends.

The proper sports event are much more detailed than Wii Sports. In general, Wii Sports only modelled a small aspect of the games - for Wii Baseball, you didn’t have to worry too much about the game. You just smack the ball with the right timing and you’re off! The game did all the running and fielding for you. In Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (or MSOG as I shall now call it) they’ve put a lot of work into properly modelling the events.
Continue Reading

Popularity: 21% [?]