Insider Gaming

Since we’re all in the Olympic mood, I decided we would play an Olympic title this week and see if it can win a gold medal.
Ok … really quick I’m going to tell you this game doesn’t win a gold medal. It doesn’t even come close to winning a bronze. This game turned out so bad that it was torture to play that I actual felt my fingers develop intense pain and a single tear of frustration fell from my eye.
But, let’s look at the positive first and the positive is the wide variety of events they offer you to play. You have 100 Meter Sprint, 110 Meter Hurdles, Pole Vault, Triple Jump, Long Jump, High Jump, Javelin, Discus, Archery and Skeet Shooting. I mean how can a game be bad when you have Skeet Shooting?
To quickly sun up all the events I will say that they all lack and most of them are just button mashers. So expect to sit there and continuously hit buttons to actual gain any kind of advantages in this game.
With the 100 Meter Sprint and 110 Meter Hurdles, all your doing is mashing buttons to try to make your guy run faster and occasionally hit the up button to make your guy jump over hurdles. The jumping part is the only part of skill you’ll need to play the running portion of the game.
The Paul Vault event is the event that annoys every bone in my body. It’s so complex and so unnecessarily hard that it just takes what ever fun this game had left and throws it out the window.
You want to know hoe complex well I’m going to tell you. The game controls like this, you have to use two different buttons and press the directional pad into three different directions – all at the same time! You actually have to lay the controller down in order to complete this event, because it requires all of your fingers.
When you actually complete the Pole Vault event and get your guy where he needs to go, he will lay on his back lifeless and I know why. Because he just wants to give up on this game too, but no we need to press on, we need to see it to the end.
I thought the Pole Vault event was bad, but the truth is it only gets worse and I never thought it could.
Next we have the Triple Jump, which is basically the same thing as Pole Vault and the controls just remain frustrating. But, with Triple Jump instead of pressing the direction pad into three different directions you’re just pressing up over and over again. Thank you Olympics game, now I have carpotunel for playing this ridiculous game.
If you fail the Triple Jump your guy will punch the area in a frightening rage and all I have to say is good for him tell the people what you think about this game.
I’m not going to get into the Long Jump, because it’s the same as the Triple Jump but instead of pressing up billions of times you press it once. Thanks game developers for giving my thumb a break.
You know what I’m not going to get into any of the other events, for the simple fact that all are bad.
Here’s an idea, why don’t they give EA Sports the Olympic title and rights and have them do a Wii only game, because I doubt they can pull it off for the XBOX360 or the Playstation 3. I mean with the Wii they can take the mechanics they use for Wii Sports and Deca Sports and apply them to a very affective game. They can call it The Games of The Olympics or Olympic Games. I’m throwing it out there EA, take it and do what you want with it.
To sum everything up this game has nothing going for it and after I was done playing it, I really felt a sense of lose for all the hours I sat playing this game. I can’t believe this is a game, you know what I shouldn’t even call it a game. It’s actually an insanity test.
It Scores A 1 Out of 10
[James Note: Go buy Madden ‘09 and play it. Read my blog at http://www.jamesentertainmentedge.blogspot.com/.]