Salt Lake 2002 Review

In February 2002, hundreds of athletes from 84 nations gathered in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, to participate in the Olympic Winter Games. Thirteen separate sporting categories were on display at this iteration of the Games, subdivided into scores of individual events unfolding at dozens of different venues. Speed skating alone offered a total of 18 distinct disciplines and alpine skiing another 10. That's a lot of sports, a lot of pageantry, and a lot of ground to cover for any PC game wishing to bring you a playable version of this remarkable occasion. Nevertheless, into the post-Games hangover wades Infogrames with the impressively titled but disappointingly endowed Salt Lake 2002. Despite a slick presentation and several clearly enjoyable moments, Salt Lake fails to capture the magnitude of this periodic winter spectacle and is in reality an entertaining yet brief whirl through just a fraction of the events you might expect.

In ski jumping, there's no turning back.

Six events do not make an Olympics, yet that is precisely the number that Infogrames and developer Attention to Detail has infused into Salt Lake, the "official" computer game of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Worse still, the events that are included are nowhere near a logical cross-section of the Winter Olympics schedule. You say you enjoy hockey, speed skating, and figure skating? Forget it--they didn't make the cut. Nor did cross-country skiing, curling, women's hockey, or more esoteric stuff such as biathlon and Nordic skiing. Instead, the computerized Winter Olympics has been boiled down to a half-dozen rather similar disciplines--men's alpine skiing downhill, men's ski jumping K120 Individual, men's snowboard parallel giant slalom, women's alpine skiing slalom, women's freestyle skiing aerials, and men's two-man bobsleigh. And that simply isn't enough for a game that outwardly appears to represent the entire experience.

Furthermore, none of the six sports that did manage to find their way into the program are blessed with a particularly complex control scheme. The one exception to the rule is freestyle skiing aerials, in which you are asked to preselect from a wide variety of single, double, or triple maneuvers and then perform a number of timed button clicks as the athlete descends the slope and launches herself into the air. Although you won't actually control the direction or speed of your onscreen persona inasmuch as you coordinate her airborne movements, it is a tricky proposition nonetheless that often forces you to disregard the pretty pictures and concentrate on frenzied button clicking.

Conversely, ski jumping is curiously simplistic. Here, you'll find yourself perched at the top of the jump ramp, monitoring an animated windsock to best determine when the prevailing breezes are strongest and offer the most lift. When the sock fills with air, you'll click a button to initiate your athlete's run and then sit back and watch as he autopilots himself toward the base of the ramp, where you'll attempt to depress another button at precisely the same moment he passes a superimposed "takeoff" marker. You'll then use the D-pad on your controller to keep his skis at optimum position as he floats through the skies and perform one more timed click as he prepares to touch down.

The replay offers a variety of impressive and sometimes frightening perspectives.

All three downhill skiing disciplines--men's alpine skiing, women's alpine skiing slalom, and men's snowboard parallel giant slalom--work on a different premise than the ski jump. In each event, you'll be asked to press the D-pad on its left or right edges to negotiate the numerous gates strewn about the various courses. Men's alpine skiing is clearly the fastest of the three and demands that you set up early for the next gate (or gates) even as you're hurtling through those above it. It also compels you to sporadically tuck and untuck to accelerate for the straightforward sections and decelerate for the complicated bits. Both women's alpine skiing slalom and men's snowboard parallel giant slalom feature tighter gate arrangements, gentler inclines, and slower speeds, thereby forcing you to be even more aggressive with not only side-to-side maneuvering but also initiating additional actions, such as "jump turns" and "poling." However, as none of the downhill sports ever let you take full command of all your skier's movements and body positioning, you'll more often feel like an onboard coach as opposed to a true participant.

Much like in real life, men's two-man bobsleigh may be the oddest event of the bunch. Although the sensation of speed is really quite convincing, the simple fact is that there really isn't much to do on a walled, constrictive, and completely predetermined course. You will be asked to manipulate two buttons at the beginning of each run as your athletes push their sleigh and then clamber in, but from then on you'll merely steer a few inches this way or that to remain in the middle of the track and prevent your snow rocket from losing momentum or tipping over.