Today's Olympics Game Review : Salt Lake City 2002

Hey kids! What with the Beijing 2008 Olympics coming in a week are you finding yourself with your PS2 and looking for a knockout Winter Olympics game that isn't the last Winter Olympics style game that came out around the same time as Mario & Sonic At The Olympics that'll get you pumped up and keeps you Higher Faster Stronger all night long without the use of performance enhancing pills to keep you in the ga... eh? Wait, wait, wait, am I shilling Salt Lake City 2002 or Viagra… Viagra possibly. Maybe. I think.

Why? Because you’ll be sadly disappointed with the “service” put out by this Winter Giggolo as you’ll soon discover Salt Lake City 2002 to be another disappointment in the long chain of disappointments that is the Winter Olympic adaptations. (I am not sure about the latest game set in winter gaming that is available on the Wii, but somehow I am guessing it's going to be better than this... anything should be better than this, really.)

Obviously innovation in these games had been dragged kicking and screaming out back as somebody at the IOC put a bullet through it’s head, considering how sucky these games are. Here we go again. Another cheaply made, poorly crafted, lackluster attempt at gaming which falls flat on it’s face in one gigantic heap. And because of that I am certain that the money I spent for this new copy (as new as an unopened 6 year old game can be) was barely worth it… yeah, I spent $2 on this game when I first reviewed it which is basically what this tripe is worth, $2.

Apparently the ancient Rumsfeld “logic” that you have to go to Olympics with the game you got lives and breathes foul tepid breath here as you march into battle in Salt Lake City and find that you are under-evented once again in a game lacking much depth or replay value short of the limited gimmick of dragging this out every Winter Olympics for multiplayer “action”… which won’t be much, I assure you.

Sure, a few of the events are improvements over their Torino 2006 counterparts, but with only six events to go through you are severely shortchanged here. At least Torino 2006 had 15 events, double and half that of Salt Lake City 2002. In mean how dull can you make these games anyway! And the real sad thing is that this game is from Eidos, and heck I expected better from Eidos! Damn! Oh, and the events are “split” between male and females… only you can’t tell much difference between the bulky action figure looking males and the not so feminine bulky action figure looking females! Freaky!

One improvement over Torino is that you can customize the few events while practicing in Freemode with light conditions (day or night settings with everything from full daylight to setting sun to nighttime) and customizable weather conditions (which you choose prior to entering each event in Freemode). Otherwise the gameplay is the same as Torino 2006, right down to the way it demands you learn the game via trial and error which sucks majorly.

And yes, somebody alert the Beijing officials that they have Japan and the creators of Sonic and Mario to thank for there being a video game out there that sets the Beijing Olympics of video games (to paraphrase the Olympics theme) "Higher" "Faster" and "Stronger" than the last two Winter Games games set in Salt Lake City AND Torino combined. Now if only Beijing 2008 (the Official Game of the XXIX Summer Olympics) can keep out of the suckitude of 1 out of 5 scoring.

As for Salt Lake City 2002? Sorry, there's no hope for it.
1 failed ski jump out of 5.

Tomorrow : Torino 2006, another bad taste of Olympics gaming.