Beijing 2008 Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 21st August 2008

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We look at the videogame version of events in Beijing.

Beijing 2008 Details:

	Sports
	PC/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360
	Eurocom
	SEGA

Out Now

N/A

With the Olympic Games in full flow, it’s about time we took a look at SEGA’s videogame version of this summer’s event in Beijing.

Beijing 2008 is the official video game of the Olympic Games held this summer in China. In the game you can compete in 38 events ranging from the usual 100m sprint and the long jump to the obscure kayaking and judo events. There are 32 national teams to choose from and compete as in the game.

There are three major game modes, Training, Competition and Olympic Games. Training is self explanatory, you can choose to do one event and practise that event until you get bored. In this mode you cannot set any Olympic or World records.

Competition mode allows you to play single or multi-player games for up to 4 players. You can create any combination of events to compete in, or choose to do the heptathlon, decathlon, all the male events, all the female events, 10 or 20 random events or even all the events.

Olympic Games mode is like a task-based career mode, in which everyday you are set a challenge and you progress through each day by completing the challenge, if you fail the challenge then it is game over and you will have to start the day over. You begin at the qualifying stages where you have to qualify for the number of finals stated; usually this starts at one and goes up. Each day you are given four or five events to compete in, and try and complete the challenge for the day. These events are outside of your control and appear to be random. This makes some of the later challenges tricky if you get a couple of events you really struggle with. Every event you compete in, you gain points depending on how well you did, and you can also get bonus points for breaking the Olympic or World record or for having the maximum power or perfect angle. These points can be used to improve your team’s skill in several areas such as speed, stamina, accuracy or slow-mo. Slow-mo, allows you to slow time down, this comes out of your slow-mo bar in the top right hand corner, this helps you a lot with some of the events where timing is crucial. Your slow-mo replenishes a little each day or you can use your earned experience points to boost it.

Occasionally, you will get challenge days, although you don’t have to take part, these events usually give you a large number of bonus points to use. Examples of challenges include throwing over a total of 200m in all the throwing events, or jumping over a total of 30m in the jumping events. I found these challenges like some of the later days in the career mode extremely difficult to do, but at least they are challenging.

Let us move onto the events, as expected some are better than others and everyone will have their favourites. There are the standard track events, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, and 1500m, which are done using the traditional button bashing techniques or “waggling” the analogue sticks. This is the same for the 4 swimming events. The jumping events (long jump, triple jump and pole vault) use the same button bashing to build power and then the L or R trigger to set the angle or timing of the jump. The high jump uses a similar mechanism to the floor exercises and balance beam events where the timing of button presses corresponding to the athletes foot hitting the ground, this proves a nice respite from the finger breaking exercise of the other events. The diving events and some of the gymnastic events require you to follow a circling dot by rotating the analogue stick. The better you follow it and keep it in your marker the higher your score. The throwing events require the usual button bashing or rotating the analogue stick in the case of the discus and hammer, and then setting the angle with the triggers. The more obscure events such as cycling team pursuit, kayaking, weight-lifting, judo, air rifle, and rapid fire pistol have quite complicated control systems, and even though each event has a tutorial which you can watch these are not always thorough enough and can be slightly confusing.

The graphics in Beijing 2008 are solid and quite realistic, but the current crop of consoles has proven they can do better than what is shown in this game. The athletes are nicely animated, if lacking a little in facial expression. The animations of them warming up, winning or losing are all the same and so get boring once you’ve seen them once, thankfully though, you can skip them. The stadiums are a bit bland in places and the water effects in the kayaking event aren’t very realistic.

The sound is quite basic, with the usual crowd noises and repetitive music in the background. The annoying American commentator can be turned off and should! There is nothing outstanding, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the sound effects for the events were rehashed versions of the SFX from a previous sports game.

This game may have quite a short lifespan for the single player, because although the career mode is challenging, it won’t hold your interest for that long. These games are always better as multiplayer games, and if you can find a friend (real or online) who is similar in skill to you, this could prove quite entertaining. This is not as fun as the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics Games for the Wii, there may be more events, but there are too many that are either long-winded or require a lot of practise to do well in. It is definitely more realistic, but Mario & Sonic changed the way you played this genre, whereas this game is just a polished reiteration of the previous Olympics games and has no new ideas really.

If you like this sort of game then this is good fun and with a friend or two may hold your interest for a while after the Olympics are over in Beijing, but more likely than not this will be a quick pick-up and play title, flawed by a few difficult or uninteresting events.