SEGA Neptune – Passion For SEGA

It looks as if Team Mario and Team Sonic couldn’t get enough of each other in their last outing in Beijing, because they’re back again for the Winter Olympics. Looking back on the originals remarkable success, it was obvious the sequel was to going to generate some hype. Two titans, one game, a vast array of sports all set for an outing in a specific event known to every member of the human race. An Olympic game, in other words.

Press A + B

Following the suit worn by M&S at the Beijing Olympics, the winter olympics is crammed full of mini games based on real-life sporting events, such as Alpine Skiing or Bob-sleighing. There are 16 Olympic events (at my count), stitched with the 11 Dream Events – which are the radical versions of the sports they originate from, each bringing a unique part of the Sonic-verse or Mushroom Kingdom into the game. You can train for these events, play them alone, or team up or go head-to-head with some mates. Or, finally, you can choose to compete on the festival mode, in which you embark on a 17 day quest for gold and glory, competing in all events either as a team of four or alone. Again a storyline is neglected, but I can’t say it hurts the game in any way. The festival mode takes you from opening to closing ceremony, and seeing as this is one massive spin-off a lack of direction is easy to let slide. You’ll be too busy hewing yourself out a place in Olympic history to care too much.

Each Olympic event is played with either the Wiimote/+nunchuk/balance board. The controls will put your timing and skill to the test and are 100% straightforward, and luckily so is the manner in which they are executed. Fluidly and easily, that is; unless you turn the Wiimote on its head you should find your character obeying you every command. Unfortunately, the game falls into the same pot-hole it’s predecessor did: some events are just toosimple. What’s even more ironic is that it’s now the opposite pot-hole – now it doesn’ t come down to making sure your wrist-strap is secure and waggling the mote like your Harry Potter (but with less flair, of course), but simply holding the Wiimote straight and tilting left and right when the need calls. The Alpine Skiing Downhill is the main offender – sure you can stand with your rear out and nunchuk and Wiimote in hand like ski-poles, but it’s just tilting left and right. Wow. And in some sports, such as the Snowboard Halfpipe, once you’re e there is no timing or skill required at all, it becomes just mindless Wii-waggling to pull off as many tricks as possible. Very wow. But I want to make it clear that all of that is essentially the bad and ugly side of this game summed up. Most other sports are fantastic fun: full of speed, hair-splitting timing, cool tricks, and, in the case of the Dream Events, imagination. I was particularly fond of the Figure Skating, where the music is incorporated into the gameplay itself. Swing the Wiimote like a conductor’s baton in time to the music and you gain an opportunity to max out your score. Playing the event to “Waltz of the Flowers” was really something else. Too bad you can’t skate to some Mario and Sonic tunes, you’re thinking, right? Perhaps you should take a peek at the Dream Figure Skating then…

Strike a pose and smile for the cameras, boys!

From what I can gather from playing by myself vs. playing with others, this game was obviously meant to be largely multiplayer; albeit the fact it’s a party game. Sadly, there is no online play, but you can connect via wireless connection  where you rank in a particular sport either in your local region or worldwide. Playing multiplayer with friends is hugely entertaining, and provides much more nail-biting, every-second-counts moments than versing the CPU’s, all of which become little challenge once you’ve become only slightly experienced in a sport. With your friends you can either play Co-op, Team, or a free-for-all in versus.

After all that skiing around and falling flat on your face in the snow, I feel it’s nice to take a break and go shopping – so I did. With every medal you win you earn star-tokens, which you can spend in the ginger-house-like village at Boutique stores and Sports Shops. In the music store you can purchase tunes unique to either the Mario and Sonic series which you can play to in the main game – snowboarding to City Escape ought to bring but some memories, Sonic fans. The only problem here is that it doesn’t take much effort to accumulate star-tokens.

Finally we come to the aesthetics of the game. Compared to other Nintendo/SEGA Wii releases this game doesn’t stand out as too crash hot in terms of graphics. There are beautifully crisp opening and closing sequences, but what you see while actually playing won’t blow you away. But what the game lacks in visual quality it makes up for in vibrant. The Dream Events take the cake for this – you have to admit after all the perfectly white snow and ice things tend to get a bit dull, but the Dream event counterparts are there to take your mind off it. But even then the Olympic events themselves aren’t all bad, the characters themselves bring plenty of colour to the slopes. Colourful and bright, it’s exactly what we should expect from a combination of Mario and Sonic. As for the sound: another Mario/Sonic game, another box of bouncy beats. Though a fan of either series may find it more entertaining to simply purchase some of their favourite tunes in the Music Store and play to those instead.

The original 16 characters has been increased to 20, with Bowser Jr and Donkey Kong joining Mario, and Metal Sonic and Silver teaming up with the Fastest Thing Alive. Each character has their own statistics concerning speed, acceleration etc, but there is almost no difference and in the long run they are evenly matched. Some familiar faces who didn’t make the playable cast will crop up in the form of ‘Rivals’ during the Festival mode, though for the most part they are only a shade more difficult than the average CPU’s. But to be fair you can put your skills to the test against the ‘King Ghosts’, which are elite rivals you can choose to compete against in the events. Interestingly all characters have their own unique way of competing in each sports, and their personalities are summed up in their ‘special moves’. For example, upon pressing A, Sonic will roll into a spindash and boost forwards, Knuckles corkscrews through anybody in his way and Peach… sort of just glides forwards, but it’s cute anyway. Unfortunately there is no interaction between characters, thus the game compares to a petri dish when it comes to depth – though I’ve heard the DS version’s Adventure mode includes some crossovers…

Coming to the end of this review I read over the text to see it all seems a bit shallow – but Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics is very much a shallow game. Not that the fact hurts it in the least – it’s meant to be. It’s meant to be played with some friends for an hour or two, and you can go through the whole game without having to touch a character you aren’t all too fond of. It’s a bucket full of laughs, and some familiar faces from both series will crop up in the form of ‘Rivals’ during the  Festival mode. If you’re a fan of either series, this is a must have. And if you’re one for party/sports genre’s, again you shouldn’t be letting this one slip by. Huge in replay value, multiplayer potential and bursting to the seams with vibrancy and a host of familiar faces, it’s a fun, light-hearted crossover with an ice-road-truckload of retro references. Should your only choice of the two versions be the Wii, we nod our heads very fast to the notion that is worth picking up.