I didn't expect this - Ski and Shoot is a thorough and addictive olympic biathlon simulation that's fun and challenging!

User Rating: 8.5 | Ski and Shoot WII
I never would have believed it - but I HAD to try it for myself.

Ski and Shoot (which truly should have been called something more clever such as Biathlon International) sounds like a crappy budget title. Sure they promise the world, but what game doesn't? The title given to this game ("Ski and Shoot") is an insult to both the game (which is very good and quite immersive) and the target audience (who can probably pronounce biathlon and don't need single syllable common words a 5 year old could read for the title to be interesting).

I honestly expected a terrible game with either fake-mii graphics or badly created pseudo-realistic models and bad controls combined with simplistic gameplay and no real challenge or long term reason to keep playing. What I found however was a very thorough olympic biathlon simulation with excellent (truly great) motion controls, different abilities from different player characters (you can choose from many real life international biathlon champions and they all exhibit different special skill levels), great graphics, excellent skill level progression (it's quite tough at first even on easy mode and yet there are helpful hints that appear throughout the game to get you started without having to continually refer to the user guide), and decent sound and music.

Your skier has very believable endurance issues that you have to work through - don't go all out at the start or you'll be in trouble later on.... you have to keep a realistic pace and use the appropriate.

The physics in the game feel much more realistic than Wii Ski (also known as Family Ski), and while I'm not putting down the excellent Family Ski at all, it's a really great game that in many ways is a bigger and more approachable actual family game than this is, Ski and Shoot offers better physics, more realistic graphics, a better soundtrack, much more challenging skiing technique (it really does require similar timing and control style to real-world skiing), and a great competitive olympic/world championship competition.

I haven't gotten into the story mode yet so I can't comment on it at all, I've only played the quick and basic competitive modes in single player so far.

But let me honestly rave about what I've experienced in this game so far. It's fun, addictive, very very realistic, challenging, and even has a (albeit limited and somewhat less fun) shooting section that also has a very real-world honest physics feel to it for anyone who's shot a rifle before.

Represent your country as one of the world's top real-world biathlon champions - it's fun, and will give you a bit of an arm workout. It even will work with your balance board!

Note - this game requires the nunchuck, so like other ski games you hold each controller like a ski pole but they double up as leg controllers for left/right sprinting etc.

Other features that I haven't tried yet but am excited about:
- story mode (it's not called story mode but that's what it seems to be...)
- wii balance board integration!!
- several multiplayer options (1,2,3 or 4 players, 2 player split screen... presumably the non-split screen multiplayer modes are "pass the wiimote" style but I haven't tried them yet to confirm)
- player character customization tools