Review: Beijing 2008

GOING FOR GOLD: Beijing 2008 is a game for Olympics fans who like their virtual events to be as challenging as the real thing.
Beijing 2008 is the official game for this year's Olympics and carries on the traditional button mashing madness that started back in the 80s with other related titles.

However, unlike the early days, Beijing 2008 is definitely aimed at being more of a serious sports simulation than a furious arcade time-waster. This game features 32 countries (unfortunately only a fraction of the 204 total competing in the Olympics) and 35 events across a range of disciplines, each with their own techniques to master.

The immediate problem with this "serious sporting" slant is that Beijing 2008 becomes a lot of hard work. Although the numerous events feature similar elements to their controls, very few gamers will be able to sit down and get a medal on their first attempt. Or even on their fourteenth attempt.

It is obvious why Sega have made this game difficult to master, as it really does portray the amazing skill and dexterity required by the athletes who take part in the Olympics. But sadly, this has also removed some of the fun from the game as well.

Although the difficulty may deter plenty of casual players, it does open the doors to those people out there looking for a detailed sporting simulator.

Plenty of events, like the 100m sprint or shot-put simply require tapping two buttons as fast as you can (the PS3 version also allows you to waggle your analogue sticks if you prefer). But the more technically complex sports demand near-perfect timing and literally hours of practice.

For example, the diving event requires you to gently move your analogue sticks to guide your player through the diving motions - twisting and turning with the right timing to avoid a nasty belly-flop. There is a similar element to the gymnastic events where you must time the pressing of various buttons with on-screen directions to try and nab that perfect score.

Other events like the long jump use the typical button tapping for speed but then a quick change of controls to use the shoulder buttons for the final jump, where your timing indicates the angle and distance you travel. Press the shoulder buttons too early or for too long and your distance will suffer dramatically. Worse yet is pressing the buttons too late, resulting in an instant disqualification as you place a foot over the jumping line.

This leads onto the other issue with Beijing 2008. The game is very non user-friendly and although each event has the option of viewing a tutorial first, they are often too quick to fully comprehend. This doesn't help the fact that most of the events have very steep learning curves and that the AI opponents seldom screw up. The end result is an extremely frustrating experience that reminds you that not only could you not do these events in real life - you now also completely suck at video games as well.

After coming dead last in judo, cycling, hurdles, 100m butterfly stroke, high jump, long jump, table tennis and gymnastics, I was beginning to lose hope. Luckily though there are some events that are easier to pick up and play and therefore more fun.

Archery featured a surprisingly natural and fluid control system that doesn't appear to feature in any other of the events. By pulling back on the right analogue stick, your player pulls back the bow and with the left stick you aim your crosshair. The longer you try and aim the shot, the smaller the target becomes to indicate strain on your archer's hand.

Flicking the right stick forwards launches the arrow, and hitting near the bullseye was satisfyingly rewarding. Especially after half an hour of clay pigeon shooting where I managed to hit a whopping 1 out of 25 targets (Sweden won gold with 24 targets).

There is only a small amount of time that any one man can continue to look like a complete muppet while playing a game by himself. This amount of time is around 53 minutes, so after nearly an hour of seeing myself come dead-last in every event I decided to get three mates around. Beijing 2008 allows for up to 4 players to compete on the same console and up to 8 players online.

Truth be told, multiplayer does make this game more entertaining. This is mainly because your shame is now shared between the four of you, all fighting to avoid being the wooden spoon champion.

Some of the highlights were the long distance running events such as the 1500m where the controls were simple and the need to pace your runners for the three laps proved to be a fun challenge. Kenya was doing brilliantly until he suffered heart failure after full-on sprinting from the starting block.

The PS3 version of the game features some excellent graphics and sound that all help immerse you into the Olympic extravagance. Despite the unusually pixilated opening menu screen, the in-game visuals are extremely life-like. The animations of the human form across all events are stunning and often it feels like you are watching the real thing on TV.

The only short-fall lies in the similarity of the models getting recycled across a few of the different nationalities. Undoubtedly though, Beijing 2008 features some very detailed athletes and this obviously helps add to the realistic presentation of the game.

One thing that's clear about Beijing 2008 though, is that the game is extremely unforgiving to both your controllers... and your hands. With all the repetitive controls and button bashing, sometimes you are in so much pain you felt like you just ran 1500m... on your thumbs. Thankfully though, the game has a great range of events so splitting the running or swimming events with slower paced ones can help reduce the strain on your thumbs.

For those players who don't want their thumbs to resemble pork sausages, we discovered an excellent method that we came to call the "no-fingered-palm technique." As many of the events allow you to waggle your analogue stick to gain speed, you can simply place your palm on top of the stick and rotate your whole hand. Trust us, you'll thank this review later when you out-run your opponents when they stop for an RSI break.

Beijing 2008 isn't an easy game to nail down into an overall score. On one hand, the people considering purchasing Beijing 2008 are likely to be serious Olympic fans wanting to get a full-on experience in the events they watch on TV.

In this case, Beijing 2008 is sure to please and the challenging learning curve is more likely to spur players on to perfect their technique and claim gold. The game even allows players to train their own team of athletes and customise their perfect team.

Even breaking virtual World and Olympic records and having them displayed online for eternal glory is possible. But for others wanting a fun arcade-like game, Beijing 2008 is likely to just end up being too much work.