Review: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Wii)

Well, we suppose we had better get off of our soapbox and actually review this game, an early tie-in to next year’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Now the predecessor – Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games - was by no means a disaster, so all may not be lost.

Things get off to a good start, as the game does make some attempt to vary the way you can play the game. You can play each event separately, play various party games and there’s even a proper Training mode this time around, which we’re thankful for. For each and every mode you also earn Star points, which let you buy music, clothes for your Miis and pieces of Olympic trivia. Many of the purchases are purely cosmetic, but at least it offers a neat bonus for Olympic enthusiasts and fans of the game series.

The main bulk of the game is the Festival mode, in both Solo and Team modes, and which makes a game attempt to give a genuine Olympics feel, as if you were actually taking part. This mode also includes Rival events, which act like boss fights against other Mario and Sonic characters such as Dry Bowser and E-123 Omega. There are noticeable problems with the Festival mode, however. For one thing, there are strange incongruities in the rules on some of the Team events which are rather distracting. Also, once the solo and team modes have been cleared, there’s no reason to go back to Festival mode at all. The mode takes about three hours to complete, with apparently no way of saving your progress, and forces you to play the Training modes as well as the actual events. These problems also mean that the mode holds very little multiplayer appeal, and it’s strange that there is no middle-ground mode, like the Circuit modes from the previous game.

All of the characters from the last game return with four new characters, and there are a grand total of 27 events to take part in; 16 Olympic events, and 11 Dream events. Of the “proper” Olympic events, Ice Hockey and Curling are the standouts. The Ice Hockey event could almost be expanded on and spun out into its own game, while the token oddball choice of Curling is still translated surprisingly well and adds a surprising level of strategy. Many of the other events seem to have limited use of the controls, with most simply requiring turning to win, but that’s due to the nature of the events themselves and we doubt more could have been done with them. In that respect, the only real weak link is Figure Skating, which is little more than an extended Quick Time Event sequence.

The Dream events were among our favourites of the last game, and we are glad to see the concept was expanded on for this sequel. While most are just re-tooled versions of standard events, the inclusion of Mario Kart-like power-ups in snowboard races is no bad thing to us. They make a welcome diversion with a lot of fan-service for Mario and Sonic enthusiasts. However, they too are problematic in that they give the game a bit of an identity crisis. We can’t help but wonder if these events were what Nintendo and Sega really wanted to do, but were still bound to the Olympic license and thus had to make the normal events too (indeed, they almost seem like an afterthought).

It’s also strange that you hardly see how the NPCs do in the events unless you’re in direct competition, giving you the feeling that you’re simply against a series of randomly generated numbers than the other characters. Still, that’s due to the nature of many of the events and the fact that having to sit through their attempts would become too painful to bear, so we could not really expect much else. One thing we also have to say is that the CPU AI, for both opponents and team-mates, is awful, making many of the events too easy.

However, the biggest problem with this game is, once again, the controls. We found a number of occasions where the motion controls were either too sensitive or not sensitive enough, which needless to say caused no end of aggravation. The biggest problems seem to come when trying to make the character turn in certain events; the Short Track event in-particular is terrible for this, as the sensitivity of the controls seems to be all over the shop. This is a game where compatibility with the MotionPlus accessory would have helped the controls immensely, but the game supports no such feature (though bizarrely it does support the Balance Board, but you’re better off sticking to the Wiimote). Considering how much MotionPlus improved Wii Sports Resort (especially improving the Archery, our most hated event in the last Mario and Sonic game), it’s infuriating that third-party developers apparently missed the memo about it.

The graphics are about on-par with the last game, though there is a noticeable drop in frame-rate which was rather jarring. General presentation actually seems to have improved, with even the real-world Olympic events no longer looking so dour. Some of the graphics even have a naïve, Christmas card-like charm to them, so the whole game does look more appealing to play than its predecessor, while the camera angles give a greater sense of scope of the events. Music has also seen improvement, with actual classical music used in the Figure Skating, as well as some fun remixes of music from the Mario and Sonic games. The speech samples are still repeated constantly though, which gets really irritating; after having to endure Sonic’s and Silver’s squawking during a long Curling match we were about ready to hurt somebody.

All things considered though, it’s only really the multiplayer that makes these sorts of games worth having, and the options for both versus and team play are put to good use, though again there’s no option for direct online gameplay.

We have to say that, if Nintendo and Sega really have to make these games, they would probably be better off ditching the Olympic license entirely and concentrated on the Dream aspect. Not only would this allow for a greater variety to the mini-games, but would also help to appeal more to Mario and Sonic fans who may find the Olympic license too restrictive. As it stands, like its predecessor this game is by no means horrible, and definite attempts to improve the formula have been made, but the control issues and various other bugbears mean that this is still only worth a rental at best.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Drew Middlemas