Torino 2006 (PS2, Xbox, PC)
Published by: 2K Sports
Developed by: 49Games
By Diana Poulsen
To be perfectly honest, I very rarely play sports games, but I adore the Olympics. I suspected that Olympic video games sucked but I decided to try anyway. Two words: No curling!? I was sure that Hockey and figure skating (thank goodness) would be out of the question for the video game, but curling? You got speed skating, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing (super G, slalom, etc., but no freestyle or aerials), ski jumping, luge (no skeleton), bobsled, biathlon and Nordic combined. So pretty much, you play the majority of the not-so-glamorous Olympic sports. Oddly, the sports that are the most boring to watch, Biathlon and Nordic Combined, are the most entertaining to play. Other sports are just too easy, like the luge. I got a gold medal on my first try. The good news is that the learning curve is low, so you’ll learn how to win rather quickly.
You can play with up to four people and three levels of difficulty. You can play single events or have competitions of nine or fifteen events. You can even design your own competition.
There is no background music, but it is oddly fitting, since there is no music in the Olympics. However, to make up for this, the announcers need to jabber more. The announcer will tell you if you are doing good or bad but they don’t say very much. I always laugh when they say, “Oh, it looks like there is a very international crowd. They are expressing good sportsmanship to each other.” The other thing that made me laugh was the very long IOC warning before you play the game.
There are some control problems. For instance, in the speed skating you must press X and O to skate, which is just awkward. It would work better if it was L1 R1, like L1 for the left leg, R1 for the right leg, which would make more sense to me. . Another flaw is that there is no auto-save, so you have to save your own progress. Another annoying thing is that you can’t pick the gender of your player – you are assigned one.
There are too many boring load screens. Fun facts about the Olympics during the load screens would have been cool. As for country selections, there are barely any tropical countries, and while many don’t compete in the Olympics, I still would have liked to see them. I mean, did the developers not see Cool Runnings. That was based on a true story you know. John Candy didn’t just make it up. The good news is that there are no opening and closing ceremonies. Seriously guys, you can make a better Olympic video game.
