Vancouver 2010 (Xbox 360) Review

Brutal Gamer’s review of Vancouver 2010 for the Xbox 360.

The Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics are rapidly approaching, starting in just a few weeks, so as we expected – someone would obviously pick up the rights to put out a game based on the enormous event. And so it happens, Sega are the ones putting this out – the same people who brought us Beijing 2008, the ultimate button masher are now letting loose Vancouver 2010.

We all know what the winter Olympics involves, all the major sports involving a fair bit of snow or ice. There are 6 main categories for you to compete in, totalling 14 events for you to sink your time into – shame there isn’t actually any form of career mode. Which is something they really missed a chance with, it could of been an epic tale of taking your country through the winter Olympics competing in multiple different events and coming out with the most points to earn gold. Instead, you take part in single events which last 2-3 rounds, which is possibly the most boring way of keeping people’s attention.

Even though the game may be painfully thin in content – what is actually available on the disc is pretty damn fun to play; playing the men’s downhill ski jump is incredibly addictive, especially with friends.  Plus, all major nationality’s are on the game for you to pick from – 24 in total, ranging from England to Russia. And from what I could tell, no matter which country you picked, it didn’t have any effect on the outcome of the events. In other words, no country was better at certain events, it’s all down to the player.

The majority of the game modes which you’ll take part in revolve heavily around being good with timing, if you fail with that, you’re not going to have a fun time with this game. You’ll guarantee get destroyed in all of the Olympic events and the challenges, meaning you may not have a good time. If that is the case, you can at the very least admire the fact the game looks pretty good – ignoring the fact the majority of the characters look identical.

As I previously mentioned earlier in the review, the game doesn’t have any form of career mode like you’re used to. It does have a separate challenge mode (obviously, not the same however better than nothing), the aim behind challenge mode? Believe it or not, to finish the 3 different difficulty stages, each has 9 challenges – all must be finished to proceed to the next difficulty stage. All the challenges involve is hitting a set objective which you’re shown before the event, an example of this is you’ve got to take part in a bobsleigh event, and to achieve the challenge you’ve got to get a cornering score of 80 or if you’re doing a speed skating challenge, you’ve got to stay above 30km/h for the whole 1,500m event.

Yeah, you’ll be able to sink a few hours into the challenges – especially the later ones, but the multiplayer is the only other real aspect of the game with some slight lasting appeal. It has both online and offline 4 player games (all competitions are available), which can be quite fun with friends offline, however online it is near impossible to find a game. On average, it took around 20-30 minutes to find one, thankfully there was no lag, there’s one positive side to this at least.

Final Thoughts

This is one of the few times Sega have really missed the ball with a game. The serious lack of content, albeit pretty damn good, means that the game has only 2-3 hour’s worth of playtime which is a complete rip-off, especially when money is pretty tight these days. I’d happily recommend it to people who like Olympic-based games when it hits the £15-£20, but for £30-£40? Fuck no.

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Vancouver 2010 (Xbox 360) Review

Brutal Gamer’s review of Vancouver 2010 for the Xbox 360. The Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics are rapidly approaching, starting in just a few weeks, so as we expected – someone would obviously pick up the rights to put out a game based on the enormous event. And so it happens, Sega are…

Posted 25 Jan 2010 | News, Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Reviews | 2 Comments