Vancouver 2010 - the Official Video Game of the Olympic Winter Games review

Vancouver 2010 developer, Brit outfit Eurocom, have managed to perfectly reflect the public’s mood of total indifference with their game, and this is really the only score on which they can be warmly congratulated.

Featuring a stingy 14 events, only half of which are any fun to play, this isn’t what you’d call ‘good value for money’. Sure, we did enjoy ourselves during the ladies’ speed-skating thanks to some old-school button-mashing that made our skater carve up the ice quicker, but most of the events are just a mess of fiddly controls and Everest-steep learning curves. Make one mistake in pretty much any discipline, and you can kiss goodbye to a podium placing. Fail to perfect the event, and a virtual orange, shiny-teethed dude called Hans will crush you into second. It’s enormously frustrating.

This seemingly random collection of Olympic events is all wrapped up in some of the worst presentation we’ve ever seen. There’s no Career mode on offer, no option to play through the whole event from start to finish, and no way to customise your character. Why the hell not? Without these seemingly obvious inclusions, Vancouver 2010 feels more like a collection of rubbish minigames than a unified, nearly full-price title. Is this some kind of elaborate joke?

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Things are slightly more enjoyable in multiplayer, because at least you and your mates can be crap at everything together, but you’ll still struggle to reach the heady heights of ‘fun’. There is online multiplayer (not recommended unless you want to be beaten by spotty, bad-teethed dudes called Hans) and split-screen/pass the pad offline play. We recommend neither. In fact, we strongly suggest you give this one the cold shoulder.

Feb 18, 2010