Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (DS)
- November 04, 2009 12:17 PM PST
- Email this!
With a successful outing at last year's Olympic Games under their belts, two of video gaming's biggest heavyweights return for the 2010 Vancouver-based Winter Olympics. A new Adventure Mode and plenty of snowy sports are just a few of the new additions to this sports compilation.
- GamePro Score
- User Score
- Write your review!
After the success of the Summer Olympic version and a solid recent outing with Winter Olympics on the Wii, Mario and Sonic bring Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics to the Nintendo DS. Not only did Sega manage to squeeze in a slightly scaled down version of the Wii, but they also complement this with an exclusive adventure game.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games was famous on both the DS and Wii for being the moment where the titular plumber and hedgehog buried their differences and worked together. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games updates the game for Winter Olympic events and as with the first title, it's built around a core of sporting minigames -- 27 to be precise. These activities come in two flavors: true to life Winter Olympic events and fantasy Dream events. The former offer a series of minigames that recreate the more popular Winter Olympic events while the later Dream events spice things up with power-ups and score multipliers.
These events largely mirror those from the Wii game, albeit on a miniature scale. Although they look remarkably similar, the diminutive size of the DS screens and the simplified controls make them short activities rather than fully blown Olympic events. Whereas the Wii events could all be played with motion gestures, the DS events switch to an uncomfortable mix of button mashing, timed presses and stylus swipes. Again, it makes the game feel more like a grab bag of activities rather than one overarching experience.
The Olympic events themselves are each competently executed, however, and once the controls have been mastered, the challenge lies in maximizing your performance in each event. It can feel like Dragon's Lair at times, where you can't always be entirely sure how much effect your actions are actually having on the on-screen action but with enough repetition, you can get a good idea of how to actually improve your results.
The scaled down scope will no doubt appeal to younger gamers -- my kids for instance, were quite happy with the game -- but those looking for more depth will be ultimately disappointed. The game's one saving grace is the addition of the exclusive Adventure mode. Here, Mario & Sonic need to rescue the Winter Games from Bowser and Eggman. A sizeable over-world, replete with a Mario & Sonic related cast, can be explored in full 3D. Along the way you play the different Olympic events to open doors and gain access to the items required to progress. The right characters need to be recruited to solve certain puzzles so that you slowly build a party of adventurers. But more than any of this, the adventure mode is a success because it brings some coherence to the game as a whole.
Although I expected the adventure to be a tacked on addition, I was surprised to find an experience that was oddly reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass. Although this is never going to have the depth or nuance of a full adventure title, it was still refreshing to see the double-teamed Mario & Sonic put to more general video gaming use than the restrained sporting activities. The game is rounded off by a local multiplayer mode which allows you to play with friends via download play. Get three players to join you and the events become much more interesting; the addition of human competitors definitely reveals more compelling aspects of each event that are missing in the single-player version.
While the action in the DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games is far smaller in scope than the Wii version, the addition of the Adventure mode and wireless multiplayer helps to up the ante. Although the game never truly shines, it has enough going for it that it's worth recommending for anyone who is invested in the upcoming Winter Olympics and younger gamers who absolutely love Mario & Sonic.
PROS: The addition of the Adventure mode is a nice boon; multiplayer options make the events more interesting.
CONS: The platform's smaller size translates into a reduction in the complexity of the events on display.
