My question: Where the hell were the testers on this game? Sick? In a coma? They weren't thinking thats for damn sure.
Pro's: Splendid graphics, good sound, great selection of events, a few good (playable) events.
Con's: Controls were the worst controls I've ever played with, tutorials sucked, Olympic Games mode was horrible, blisters and burn-marks, LIVE had tons of lag, too many turn-based events, ridiculous event control concepts, you need to be an Olympic athlete to play, unrealistic, repetitive, your performance only affects your score, character designs don't make sense.
When my dad and I went to go pick this game up from our local Game Crazy, we were thoroughly excited since Torino 2006 was so much fun. When we got to Game Crazy, we saw it on the used wrack, only a few days after it was released, at the time I asked myself why. Now, I know the answer to that question and it makes perfect sense. The answer: It sucks!
Once we got home, my dad, my little brother, my friend and I sat down to play, expecting it to be the coolest thing since sliced bread. And for a while it was, but later into the night, our hands, arms and thumbs hurt like hell.
I'll give the game this: It had good eye and ear-candy. The visuals are absolutely stunning, most of the time you can actually see the characters sweat, like they're real people. The sound is great too, especially how after each event, they play an abridged version of the winning country's national anthem. To make it better, no obnoxious commentators!
The controls for this game were absolutely horrendous, so much so to the point where I'm positive you really need to be an Olympic athlete to play it correctly, or atleast a pro-gamer for the MLG (Major League Gaming). It was as if the creators tried to map Wii controls onto the 360's controller. In events such as biking, swimming and running, you actually need to mercilessly palm the thumb-stick at an immense speed in order to win. My dad, my friend and I literally had a small red burn-mark on our palms by the end of the biking event. Those events are also liable to snap your analog sticks along with your fingers. And I don't know what moron thought spinning the right thumb stick clockwise and the left thumb stick counter-clockwise simultaneously was a good idea for the platform diving. And the rapid start-then-let-go on the A button for the shot-put was more tedious than it was enjoyable.
Olympic Games mode was damn near impossible to do. You start out with an athlete that's about as ready for the Olympics as a fat, blind person is, you have to then qualify and you thereby make the character better. It's a great accomplishment if you can even get passed day 2. To make it worse, in any mode, there's no way to change the AI of the computers, which is a basic option for all competitive games, this would be ok, if they automatically preformed better or worse, depending on your skill level, but they don't.
Out of all the insanely difficult events, there are that are easy, and, dare I say it; fun! Those would be the Javelin, Balance Beam (though it does get repetitive), Air Gun shhoting and the high jump once you get the hang of it. The controls are not impossibly difficult, they're relatively fast paced so they're fun to do in groups and they don't have you running to the freezer for an ice-pack.
While playing on LIVE is a great idea for a game like this, there are two main things that make it less than enjoyable. Those would be the lag you get most of the time and the fact that most of the events are turn-based, so playing with anymore than 3-4 people is very slow and boring. It gives you enough time in between turns to wonder "Why am I playing this?".
Probably the worst thing about this game, as I said, would be the absurd controls. However, not only are they a pain in the rear, but they also make about as much sense as a monkey riding a unicycle. I for one, do not understand how mashing arrow buttons as if you were dancing, relates to Judo at all. Just as I don't understand how palming the thumb-stick in circles for 4min straight relates to biking in the least, when you ride a bike like that, your legs do not burn as bad as your hand when you finish the event.
This game also lacks variety. The controls for the floor exercise are exactly the same as for the balance beam, to make it worse, the routines for Easy, Medium and Hard are exactly the same as well, only the person moves faster as you go up in difficulty. The shortest dash event, is the same as the longest dash event, no energy conservation differences, nothing except sorer hands. In addition to that, the bars gymnastics were very reminiscent of Step Mania but with a joystick.
With the diving, floor exercise and swimming, your actions have little effect on anything other than your score/time. As my cousin pointed out to me, if you don't touch the controller at all during the diving, the girl doesn't belly-flop, she just does the same exact thing but with a bigger splash and if you rotate the thumb-stick backwards, she doesn't hit her head on the platform, she just does the same thing. The floor exercises don't change much either, she may stumble a little, but that's about it. With any swimming event, if you totally let go of the controller, the guy doesn't sink. I mean really, how realistic is that?
Another thing about this game that's a little odd, is I cant tell the difference between the Americans and Jamaicans, for some reason, most of the American women are black, I don't know why that is. It's its near impossible to tell the Japanese from the Chinese (except that the Japanese have cooler clothes), its more like the game has "Generic Asian face x,y,z female and Generic Asian face x,y,z male"
What's the point of a tutorial? To show you how to do something. The tutorials in this game do everything but that. In Judo they don't teach you the terminology, for all of the events, the buttons and text are near unreadable (and I have 20/20 vision, so ya can't blame it on that) making pressing the correct buttons rather difficult.
Really, the best thing about this game is the multiplayer, not for it's gameplay, but just for the sheer humor in watching you and your friends/opponents royally screw up and the strange things that escape peoples mouths when they can't do something right.
All in all, this game is a waste of money and it's the most moronic thing I've ever played. I have no idea what on earth the creators ad testers were thinking when they passed this game to be released out to stores. It really is as if they tried (and failed miserably) to map a Wii game to a 360 controller. Ya know how games have warnings about epileptic seizures? Well this game needs a warning that says "Danger: Extended use of this product may result in broken thumb-sticks, sore fingers, arms and hands and extreme anger. Play at your own risk" Or something to that effect.