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By Keith B (24th Jul 2008)Every year people suffer releases tied in with the real world, and while many of said releases are shoddy movie cash-ins, Beijing 2008 offers us the chance to stake our name in history as an Olympian.

When a game hits release that allows players to participate in no less than 38 sports, there are two ways it can go. It can either be a fulfilling representation of the event that captures the hearts of players and completes its reason for existence by fuelling play that features passing the controller around the room with mates. Or it can be, at its heart, an unfulfilling way to pass time. Beijing, for all its good points, falls into the latter category.

From the beginning the game looks like it has potential. Well presented, each of the disciplines look great and tend, for the most part, to capture the feeling of competition. The locations and player animation are actually nicely polished, with motions that reflect how good you’re doing – an example being, after a perfect round on the pistol shoot, the smug smirk the character has as he looks about. It’s actually quite believable. And the range of sports isn’t to be sneezed at either, with just about every Olympic sport you can imagine playable.
Once the game loads up you’d be wise to spend a little time perfecting your techniques with the controller. And when I say technique, I mean waggling the stick (or pounding the buttons) because that’s what you’re going to spend a considerable amount of time doing. Most sports that involve forward movement (running, hurdles, etc) all use waggling as the main way for progress and you’re going to need to get some speed up.

This is the main failing for Beijing 2008 but it would be unfair to nail it to the cross because it has a monobrow, or one feature you can’t ignore. So let me explain why that one feature underlines many of the key faults with Beijing. The controls are, for lack of a batter term, pure sh*t. In events where you don’t have to waggle the thumbstick like a madman, you have to be a little more skilful in your efforts and use other control methods. Should you be playing a game where you have to aim (archery, shooting) things revert to your normal aiming-with-thumbstick scenario, except you can’t invert the Y axis, which for me, is terrible. As an inverter by trade I not only struggle with non-inverted systems, I rage against the fact it isn’t an option. While I make no claims to know how many people why play consoles are inverters, I can imagine that it’s surely enough to warrant inclusion from the first days of control discussions within the offices of Eurocom.

The point I’m making is highlighted by an example of what happened when I started in the Olympics (as opposed to eh training mode). I had a sprint (waggling), a swim (waggling) and then a hammer throw (waggling then hit a button). The sprint says it all – not only are you waggling like a madman, you have to waggle enough to beat an Olympic time, which is no easy task. At the end of my 400m sprint (where I managed to come in fourth), I was sweating. About 60 seconds of waggling does that to me. Then the swim did the same. Then the hammer. Then I turned it off.

Let’s say for the sake of this argument (and against all reason) that you have thumbs like tree-trunks and four hours of frantic waggling appeals, and the controls won’t deter you. Should this be the case, there could, very well, be something here for you. But I doubt it.

Because you must flutter between the various events, you’ve got the chance to watch the tutorial for each to see what you need to do. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, these normally follow like this: waggle or rotate thumbstick to gain power, move a stick some direction and hit one of the many buttons used (all trigger and face buttons are in play), and see what happens. Something like diving requires you to rotate one thumbstick on direction while rotating the other the other. Does that make sense? Not if you’re playing. And this is the killer blow – each event has its own controls and many of them make barely any sense.

The easiest way to explain it is to say that there were a great many risks in tackling this subject and some have paid off, others are still cheques-in-the-post. Some of the events are really good fun to play and foster playing with friends, while other simply don’t.

There is online play and I hoped this would fare better, allowing me to grapple with people and cruch them in my might. Not so. I barely found any games online and when I did, they featured so much quitting early it wasn’t worth it. Not Eurocom’s fault? Perhaps.

So you see, normally I wouldn’t crush a game just because I struggled with the controls. Maybe I’m just not quick enough. But when you have 38 different sets of controls and are playing AI with God-like abilities the fun drains fast. Anbd this is the reason I can’t recommend this, because it’s just not fun to play. It really is too much like hard work, and the rewards aren’t there to encourage longer play.

Had the control system been better developed this could have been fun, because it has just about everything else including depth and presentation. But it doesn’t, and for many who buy this game, that will be the crunch thing. No thought.