After the trailblazing success Mario and Sonic’s first sporting outing, it was a fair bet that any sequel would do just as well. This new iteration, revolving around the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games (not the Olympic Winter Games as the game’s title would have it) has done well at retail already, but leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth for several reasons.
Firstly, the development team have implemented Balance Board support that works very, very nicely indeed. Then, they’ve decided to limit Balance Board usage to single events only, meaning that if you want to play the game’s full Olympic mode (or “Festival”) you’ll have to deal with “standard” controls only. Fortunately, those standard controls are much more refined that in the first title, with much more emphasis being placed on skill, rather than the rampant flailing that was required previously. That isn’t to say that things are as accurate as they might be – far from it – since the game doesn’t employ MotionPlus support. Usually, this wouldn’t be mentioned, but there will be times when playing MSOWG (yeah, MSOWG) that you’ll be cursing the developers for not including it.
Unlike other multi-event games, there aren’t really any events included here that you could single out as being particularly weak. A strong roster featuring skiing, skating, curling, hockey and more is included, with some of the control systems coming across as strange, but yet surprisingly fun. Jumping into a bobsled for example, requires the player to hold the Wiimote and nunchuk vertically in front of their chest, and lean their body left and right in order to steer the sled. It doesn’t sound like much, but this is superb fun that – when used in multiplayer mode – will have everyone in stitches. Even events such as ice hockey – which sound as if they’ll be terrible to control with the available peripherals – manage to be engaging and fun.
Being successful in any of the game modes rewards you with in-game currency to use in the Olympic Village, which will “sell” you relatively worthless unlockables such as new music and paint-jobs for your skis and such. Completists will have a field day, but most players will be non-plussed, especially when they’re being asked to pony up virtual currency for books that explain seemingly everything you never wanted to know about the Olympic movement.
However, some unlockables are genuinely worth the hassle, and those come in the form of the returning Dream Events. Here, new spins are taken on the Olympic sports, with the standard activities being shifted to new arenas. Dream Alpine takes you back to the Green Hill Zone from the original Sonic the Hedgehog game, whilst Dream Ski Cross has a distinctly Mario-esque feel about it. Another highlight includes taking larger characters such as Eggman (Dr. Robotnik to you and I) to the figure skating rink and tasking them with prancing about to Ave Maria, which is just too funny for words.
The problem with Mario and Sonic at The Olympic Winter Games is that – despite an improved control system – it’s far, far too similar to the first game. Sure, you have new events and yes, when you get four friends huddled around the Wii it truly is friendly enough to give everyone a real chance at winning. But, it feels all too much like a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes to truly be considered as a vast improvement over the original title. MotionPlus support and the accuracy that it brings would have done wonders – especially since the relatively expansive Festival mode is so much fun – in making sure that this was a title that would be trotted out time and again for a quick go. As it stands though, the package suffers from being just another collection of mini-games. Of course, with the big licences involved, it stands far, far above the millions of other mini-game collections that are available for the Wii but ultimately, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games doesn’t fulfil the potential that those licences afford it.
