Review: Vancouver 2010 (Xbox 360, PS3)

Let’s get this out of the way right now; I’m not a big Olympics fan. In fact, unless there’s some crazy-fast sprinter or a swimmer who appears to be more fish than man, I’ll likely avoid the five rings wherever I see them.

That said, when the opportunity came around to play Vancouver 2010, I was struck with the unmistakable feeling of nostalgia and my head filled with images of me, controller in hand, tapping feverishly at the A button until I simply couldn’t take it any longer.

You see, I’m a child of the NES, and virtual athletic competition, to me, has always meant straining my hand muscles nearly to the point of collapse, much like the athletes my avatar is attempting to emulate on the screen. Surprisingly, Vancouver 2010 is able to marry my childhood memories with modern video game sensibilities and create a pleasurable experience that most will appreciate, if not love.

Perhaps more than any other genre, games based on the Olympics require the player to suspend their disbelief. I say this because, in many ways, I feel I am more likely to be fighting an alien invasion in the coming decade than be representing my country with any form of athletic feat, unless back-cracking becomes an officially sanctioned event. Vancouver 2010 accomplishes this by taking a bit of an artistic license with much of its content. Sure, you can bust your polygonal balls attempting to shave seconds off your downhill time in the traditional winter Olympics events. This will take you no more than an hour or two to complete and you can probably knock out gold medals in all the events in a short weekend. Or, you can do what I did, which is spend the vast majority of your time in the “Challenge” events. I was worried that these extra nibbles of gameplay would be just that, and might feel tacked-on and pointless. Luckily for Vancouver, that is not the case.

These events are placed into categories based on difficulty and, as you might assume, they get harder as you go along. What sets these runs apart is how much more fun they are than the standard get-there-faster fare that you normally associate with Olympics games. For example, one challenge has you racing down the women’s alpine ski course, just as you would in the regular portion of the game. However, this time the course is littered with snowmen, which you must avoid or get seconds added to your score. Hit too many and the event ends outright. Why are there snowmen on the course? Who cares! That aspect is never explained, nor should it be, as you’ll be too busy avoiding the powdery bastards to care.

The visuals are what you’d expect from a modern-day sports title. Great lighting, mostly-great character models, and believable environments (snow is pretty easy to render these days) keep you in the moment and never detract from the action. Audio is a similar case, with no-name rock accompanying the more intense events, and sound cues to let you know when you’ve passed a checkpoint.

Overall, Vancouver 2010 was a pleasant surprise for a somewhat jaded gamer like myself, and gave me the opportunity to relive some classic button-tapping madness, if only for a few moments at the start of each race. If you’re an Olympics nut this is a no-brainer purchase, but if you’re more the space marine kind of guy, or a sports gamer who’s burned out on Madden, you may want to give it a trial run before you dive head-first into the powder.