Vancouver 2010 is Sega’s second attempt at tapping into merchandising money pit of the Winter Olympic Games, sporting an official licence and fourteen different simulated events. But where the developer’s other title – Mario and Sonic – took a playful approach to those sub-zero athletic feats, Vancouver studiously represents realism at its most painstakingly dull – stripping away any sense of pagentry, atmosphere, spirit or human endeavour. What’s left is a bare-bones title with a few spartan moments of interest.
But let’s begin with the events themselves. Broken into six different categories, Vancouver 2010 allows the player to delve into Alpine Skiing, Sledding, Freestyle Skiing, Snowboarding, Ski Jumping and Speed Skating. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that almost all of the above incorporate an element of racing, neatly allowing the graphical engine to sit within a tight little niche and completely ignore the likes of Curling – which, let’s face it, would have been the event most of us would have chosen immediately.
So it’s all about speed then. And to their credit, Sega does a decent job of reproducing the concept. Alpine Skiing and Snowboarding control simply but effectively, with a common system of right trigger to tuck, left trigger to carve out sharp turns, and an analogue stick to control direction. Rumble feedback is good, and the sensation of adrenaline and pace is palpable as screen estate shrinks to a focussed point at high velocity, often snapping back to reality with the approach of a nearby fence.
Sledding too, shares a similar taste for sensory isolation. Control here is even simpler: time your launch with a single button, rhythmically mash the same button for around five seconds, then use the triggers to lean your chap in either direction as you slide down an icy shute of certain death. In the case of team bobsled, you’ll be using both analogue sticks to control your band of mentalists, but that’s hardly a sea-change in control that’ll leave you grasping for the manual. It is, essentially, the same game stretched across different disciplines.
Other events share a similarly simplistic fate. Speed skating involves mashing buttons and sporadically holding left on the analogue stick until RSI sets in; Freestyle Aerials sees you rotating analogue sticks to rhythm patterns; whilst the ‘cross’ events control the same as snowboarding or skiing, albeit with an additional button press to jump every now and then. Ski Jumping is probably the best of the lot, with the first-person viewpoint and heavy-breathing audio providing ample atmosphere for a well-judged and addictive difficulty curve.
Of course, if you wrap all of those events into a lavish career mode with awe-inspiring presentation, then at least the window dressing is there to serve as both distraction and motivator – but Vancouver 2010 has neither. The ‘Olympics’ mode serves as a way to access events in any order or stack that you choose, with a brief podium cutaway serving as a reward at the end of each one. Practice mode is as it sounds, and challenge mode essentially throws the same mechanics at you with various caveats to achieve, but it’s entirely soulless and finished within an hour at best.
All of which doesn’t add up to much of a proposition. If we’re being reductive, you could boil down almost any classic athletics title to a series of repetitive challenges, but the key differentiators between those and Sega’s effort lie with atmosphere and variety. Simply put, there is precious little of the former, and virtually none of the latter on display here. If those are the benchmarks against which we judge games in this genre, Vancouver 2010 is a hollow shell of the game it could have been.
Originally written for StrategyInformer.com, reproduced here with permission
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