ESPN International Winter Sports 2002 Review (PS2)

So the Olympics are over. But just as the season brings about Olympic spirit for the athlete many gamers feel the urge to get a taste with Olympic games. Quite honestly there hasn't been a decent Olympic game for years. We all remember the old Track n Field games for the NES, but in the last few years there hasn't been a worthy game.

And I'm sorry to say that ESPN International Winter Sports 2002, isn't that game to rekindle the Olympic spirit on your Playstation 2.

Winter Sports, in a nutshell, offers you ten different events, more like mini-games, such as ski jumping, figure skating, curling, moguls, bobsled, downhill, slalom, half-pipe and speed skating. At a glance that may seem like a decent amount but you'll get bored quickly on how they don't offer much variety after you played them. Some events have the old formula of button mashing in them somewhere like speed skating, bobsled or ski jumping. Events like downhill, slalom, and bobsled have you guide yourself down the mountain or track. In figure skating you perform maneuvers by pressing the corresponding buttons on the screen. I don’t know if the producers forgot that this is the year 2002 not 1985. The game doesn't offer any sort of replay value and definitely doesn't offer any innovations. And this really hampers the gameplay. In events like ski jumping once you master the control scheme you'll be able to get gold every time. The same goes for the skiing events. Once you know the track there's very little left to play. The reason is that game makes you the last in each event. It would have been better if they made it like the Olympics where many times you have to wait and see if you are on the medal stand. But you never know how you did until the event is over.

I honestly don't know what to say about the gameplay. I've put in a good review session with this game and there's not much about the gameplay. The only thing I could say is that I wanted to go off and play Track n Field to get my Olympic fill.

Let's continue on with the pain of graphics and sound. Graphically the game portrays each event realistically. There's nothing that stands out as blatantly wrong. The one bright spot, if you can call it that,is that the game utilizes the ESPN license. While it doesn't add much to the game, the presentation looks professional with all the ESPN graphics. One major complaint is the sound. There is none. The excitement level could have shot through the roof if an announcer would have been screaming as you came down the slope, or landed a triple in figure skating.

Reviews like these are hard, not because the games are poor but there's not much I can tell you. Winter Sports suffers like every other Olympic game made. They don't give you enough events and never capture the feeling of the games. To make matters worse, the game, around the country, is being sold for $49.99. I might recommend this game if they charged $9.99 or $19.99. This game is barely a rental and since the Olympics are over I hope the urges of reliving the Olympics are over because this game won't satisfy many.