To describe London 2012 as one of the best Olympic-themed videogames ever is to damn it with faint praise - let’s face it, there’s not an awful lot of competition. It speaks volumes that hoary old titles like Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and California Games are often still considered the yardstick by which other Olympic sports games are judged – discounting, of course, Mario and Sonic’s attempts to reinvigorate the event. Although it’s flawed, a rare amount of thought and effort has gone into this edition, for which we can only applaud the development team at Sega Studios Australia.
Its necessarily broad remit is problematic in the sense that no event can possibly receive the same level of attention and care as a game based on a single sport, and so it’s only natural that some events come off better than others. Still, it’s refreshing to find that track events are not the kind of puddle-deep button-mashers we’ve grown used to. Instead, races require you to keep a gauge in the green to maintain top speed – hammer away as fast as you possibly can, and you’ll overfill the meter, causing your athlete to slow up. The idea works particularly well in the 200m and is further complicated by an additional energy bar in the tricky 400m races. Then again, such an approach is not quite so fitting for the sprint, where stamina conservation is hardly the first thing on an athlete’s mind. It’s hard to criticise the developer for trying something a little different, but it would have made more sense for this one event to be focused entirely on speed.
Elsewhere, field events make smart use of the analogue stick to determine the trajectory of your leaps and throws. The triple jump is particularly testing, asking you to flick the left stick three times at 45 degree angles to gain the optimum distance, while the high jump requires a sharper angle still, then a timed button-press when airborne to lift your legs over the bar. The javelin and shot put, meanwhile, require you to flick the stick upwards as an angle meter descends, with around 35 degrees resulting in a perfect throw. This isn’t just a case of identical mechanics with slightly different clothing: each game has its own systems, which are clearly and concisely explained by the pleasingly brisk tutorials. However, there’s no way to practice an event, and given that you don’t always get a proper test run in the tutorial, this proves problematic in events where you have a single shot at glory.
Away from the stadium, things are a little more hit and miss. Swimming events involve a rare bit of rapid tapping as you power through the water before surfacing to a more rhythmic form of play, as you time downward strokes of the two analogue sticks when your swimmer’s arms are fully extended. Mastering the timing isn’t as simple as it sounds, and rather than patronising you with repeated prompts, the game leaves it up to you to figure out the right tempo for each event. Either way, it’s much more involving than the diving and gymnastic events, which play out as nothing more than extended QTEs where you select a routine and attempt to pull it off with timed button presses.
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Away from the stadium, things are a little more hit and miss.
With momentum handled automatically, your involvement feels limited, and the weak feedback can make the judge’s scoring seem capricious. At least they’re an improvement on the awful beach volleyball event, ironically enough the ugliest event of the lot. It’s particularly disappointing when you consider Sega also published Beach Spikers, arguably the finest beach volleyball game ever made.
Shooting events are equally mixed. Skeet shooting initially suffers from sluggish controls, but after a while becomes too easy. The pistol-based alternative, however, is great, with the increasingly tight time limits often forcing wayward shots as you attempt to hit the bullseye of five targets. Talking of bullseyes, archery is another highlight, using both analogue sticks to engaging effect as you battle the wind to outscore your rivals.
It’s in the more unique events that London 2012 is at its best. At first, table tennis can feel clumsy, but its right stick shot controls prove surprisingly flexible, and against a similarly skilled opponent, it’s possible to wow the crowd with extended rallies. Kayaking is made to sound dauntingly complex by the uncommonly wordy tutorial, but in practice is straightforward yet challenging. The sole rowing event, meanwhile, benefits from a terrific control scheme that has you squeezing and releasing both triggers to glide through the water at Eton Dornay. Getting into a perfect rhythm is enormously satisfying and it’s exhilarating to pull past an opponent just as you both cross the line.
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You’re better off creating your own playlist of events so you have a wider choice.
The main single-player game gives you a series of events to compete in over several days, with qualifying and finals for each. You have a limited number of restart tokens to play if you perform poorly, but otherwise it’s a fairly basic framework for the roster of activities. There’s no RPG-style levelling system, and no opportunity to train or manage your athletes. You can customise their appearance or rename them, but this is no career mode. In fact, you’re better off creating your own playlist of events so you have a wider choice compared with the game’s limited selection.
For the multiplayer element, you’re first asked to select a country to represent, with your achievements adding to a global score: a neat idea that adds an extra frisson to online encounters. Again, you can create a playlist of events to take part in if you fancy something more substantial than a quick race. In events that are naturally asynchronous, players take their turn simultaneously, with scores or times shown between rounds. It’s a pity you’re not able to witness any of your opponents’ feats of skill (or ineptitude) but the applause and mockery can be saved for the local multiplayer games.
Of these, the Motion Party Play option offers just 13 events, only a handful of which offer any kind of variation on the norm. Throwing javelins at targets is fleetingly amusing, but while removing the gates for kayaking makes for a chaotic sprint to the finish, it’s not a particularly inspiring or inventive twist on the regular event. While the events themselves might not be anything new, the Move controls give some of them a fresh feel. Cycling uses tilt controls to fine effect, while the shooting elements naturally benefit from the ability to aim directly at the screen, including archery, which features support for two controllers. Gesture-based events, however, don’t really show the wand in its best light: during kayaking you may regularly be alerted to the fact that the Eye camera can’t see the controller, while the sprint suffers from a similar kind of imprecision to the Kinect controls. If you have a choice of both console versions, the PS3 just about has the edge, though in both games most players will likely revert to the standard pad setup.
For an Olympic game, the presentation is surprisingly strong. Sure, the character models won’t give Naughty Dog sleepless nights, but for the most part they’re well-drawn and decently animated. It’s as vibrantly colourful as sports games get – as if Sega Studios Australia has raided AM2’s primary-coloured palette for the skies and arenas, making London seem like the brightest, happiest place in the world. The hearty cheers from the crowd roaring a good performance helps create a sense of excitement, as does some enthusiastic contextual commentary from broadcaster Seth Bennett and former 400m athlete Allison Curbishley. There’s even a typically cheesy Sega announcer for Party Play mode.
Source : ign[dot]com
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