Winter Sports 2: The Next Challenge review

Feeling nostalgic, we booted up Winter Sports 2, hoping for a quick hit of snow-filled sporting frolics. Our enthusiasm soon melted away like a snowball down our pants, however. Winter Sports is the sort of title that lives or dies by the quality of its events. Alas, they’re a bit dull. The modes are all similar – Career sees you leveling up your skills, Singles mode lets you practice each event individually and Challenge gives you impossibly specific tasks to complete. Amazingly, the controls are pretty responsive, with a mass of specific instructions for each event.

The half-pipe snowboarding and skating challenges are decent and the curling stands out as a joy when you master it. Sadly, these are small exceptions. The rest of the events are near identical, such as bobsleigh, skeleton and luge, which force you to use the remote like a steering wheel. Irritating, over-sensitive and just plain baffling, it’s the scratch that exposes the game’s lack of variety and depth. Having to win a gold medal every time to unlock further events sent a chill down our spines and the balance board support makes events more confusing.

The overall presentation is sub-par, though there’s a photo of speed skater Anni Friesinger on the box if that floats your boat. Turn off the commentary as soon as you can because doing so gives you a chance to hear the quite brilliant funk soundtrack – the only real gold medal here.

Apr 22, 2009