Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games
Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games, as its name implies, is the official Olympic video game of the 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver. It is an authentic simulation of a host of events from the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games with focus on the extreme speed of winter sports with the addition of an all new challenge mode. The game was developed by Eurocom and published by Sega for the Sony PlayStation 3 platform. It was released on January 12 2010 in North America and January 15 2010 in Europe under the genre of Sports (Olympic). Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games includes both a single player and a multi player mode. It was officially announced on March 11 2009.
Review
Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games includes events such as Alpine Skiing (Giant Slalom, Slalom, Downhill and Super G), Sledding (Two-Man Bobsleigh, Luge Singles and Skeleton), Freestyle skiing (Aerials and Ski Cross), Snowboarding (Parallel Giant Slalom and Snowboard Cross), Ski Jumping (Individual Large Hill), and Speed Skating (500 m Short track speed skating and 1500 m Short track speed skating). In addition to that, the game also includes 30 different challenges spread over all the events which can be unlocked as the game progresses according to when the user completes the tasks. Among the nations represented include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United States. Critics have viewed the Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games as a fairly straightforward video game that allows players to create a playlist of events or even play them one at a time. In terms of gameplay, the Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games incorporates a first-person camera angle for every event in the game, making it more realistic as you’ll be able to hear their breath inside the helmet while downhill skiing, the motion blur effect ramped up and even a colour filter seen over the environment to make it seem like you’re looking through goggles. However, critics have also pointed out that Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games does not embody any soul behind any of the required actions, making it pointless to do anything beyond the few minutes that the event lasts. Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games also includes an online mode that helps extend the life span of the gameplay together with the fairly lengthy set of challenges which are separated across three mountains which symbolizes varying levels of difficulty. In the online gameplay mode, up to four players are allowed to join up and compete in a one-off event or a series of events, allowing for medal tallying in the game to help give meaning to the subsequent events. In terms of visuals, Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games features player models which are reasonably well-detailed and are able to move naturally enough for the relatively limited number of animations while the first-person view does a good job of raising the bar set by other Olympic games. Vancouver 2010: The Official Videogame of the Winter Olympic Games maintains a consistent framerate although the textures could see an improvement given the limited architecture and geometry in any given level.
“Although Vancouver 2010 is vastly improved from Beijing 2008, it is ultimately lacking in many key areas. It’s still more fun to watch the real lugers do their thing than take part in this shallow digital representation.” (GameSpot, 2009)
