Could have been great but fails to get off the blocks.
I purchased the game on the day of release and some friends and I decided to start with a competition containing every single event. The first thing that struck me was that we were unable to change the names of our characters! Every player had to be called the same as the users profile with a number after each player. This struck us all as poor and we then realised that the chance of setting world records on one machine and being able to differentiate between our individual scores in the long term would be absolutely impossible.
As the competition dragged on we noticed that although some event are great many are terrible and they shouldn't really have bothered including these events. It is like going to a concert to see all your favourite bands and having to sit through your mum and dads favourites in between sets. I think that it is truly obvious before you even pick up the game which events you will enjoy and which you will play once or twice at the absolute maximum.
The graphics of the game do look very nice but there is definitely some frame rate issues which become much more apparent should you venture online.
The difficultly as with the entertainment value of the game vary from event to event. If you are a talented button basher for example even with a text book terrible start you will still win the 400 by at least 50 meters however you will need to hit 10 nearly every time to win at archery.
In terms of replay value and life for this title I think that i will strongly depend on how you plan on using the game. If you just want to play yourself and try and beat your own scores you may get your moneys worth. But if you plan to play online or with friends I would not bother. The usual three turns rule has given way to the new six turns rule, as you can imagine four of you playing a whole Olympics with 6 turns each takes to long. Five hours to be precise!
Take long jump for example you have to skip about five cut scenes! Firstly the athlete will wave to the crowd then prepare him/her self for the jump. After the jump the athlete will agonize with themselves while they wait for the flag. It's white! now they wait for the official reading, after they receive the result they jump around celebrating even if the jump is smaller than a previous attempt. So imagine four people with six attempts each thats 120 times that you need to mash the x button to skip the cut scene. But what really annoys me about this is that the long jump itself is a great event on the game but almost unplayable due to the waiting.
To summarise the game in whole is typified by the above example it could have been great but fails in many areas. A few example of how it could of been great.
The online which I see in this situation is a technology that us T&F people always wanted but never could have has not been done correctly. For example during a 400M you ease up on the running because it looks like you have won by some distance. But the other players aren't running at the same time so although on your TV you win you finish 5th. The hurdles also are completely unplayable because of the skipping frame rate. This really needs to be addressed.
Then the release of the game, the Olympics starts on the 08/08/08 at 08.08 so why not hold the release and bring the game out after the 2.41 update is completely up and running and award trophies for achievements? I think it would have been a nice touch.
My final problem is that the power bar sometimes has a maximum, so once you have filled the bar it bounces and when the power lock comes in it is pure luck as to if you get full power or not. How annoying! They try and balance power and skill but it ends up leaving a big gap for luck.
If after reading this you still would like to buy this game please look on ebay where you will find my copy available for the next 7 days along with the copies of several hundred others.
I rate the game 6.5 because although it is a big let down I think the current gaming generation is very spoiled and if this game went head to head with summer games on my Sega Megadrive it would win.
Ricko