SEGA Neptune – Passion For SEGA

Righto – where to start? It’s been around two years now since the dynamic duo hit the DS together, reeling in wads of cash in the process and kicking off a series that has led us here – the Winter Olympics. Before playing this installment I went back to basic’s and refreshed myself with the series by ‘borrowing‘ the Mario and Sonic at the Beijing Olympics’ chip from the small blonde mutation my mother calls a sister. And by comparing the two it’s fair to say that M&S2 is, in many ways, better than it’s predecessor. It’s also fair to say that for all the strides forward it takes it quickly skips half as many back. The Wii version I immensely enjoyed, and the differences in gameplay the DS offers doesn’t always outshine it’s big brother’s. Sure this time the DS hasn’t just taken the Wii’s dynamics and pasted it onto its own style of play, but unfortunately this sometimes feels like visiting an indoor ski-slope, it’s just not the same. There’s a lot of ways to review this - I could review it on its own, as a series, or in comparison to the Wii version. Myself being my unorganised self have decided to do all of this in a single review ^.^ So – to the slopes!

And here we are again... Touch to Play!

Like the Wii version, M&S2 on the DS provides a menagerie of sports for you to play behind the ears of Sonic, Mario and friends. Unlike the Wii version, the DS goes one ski-pole further and offers an adventure mode: The adventure Tour. Bowser and Dr Eggman have kidnapped the Snow Spirits, as you do, and without these spirits snow cannot fall, and thus the Winter Olympics cannot be held. Flimsy stuff,  but you come to expect this from Mario and Sonic games of late. The dynamic duo take it upon themselves to save the Olympic games, visiting different hub-worlds and rescuing Snow Spirits. Now, the mini hub worlds – for some reason I was expecting, for some inexplicable reason, the sort of gameplay in between the Olympic sports to be reminiscent of Mario and Sonic games. Loop-the-loops, coins, rings, jumping, to be fair there are pipes and springs (of which only Mario and Sonic respectively can use) to move you around and provide a bit of variance, but all in all it’s just same-old puzzle solving and exploring. The location’s themselves aren’t particularly bright or imaginative, either. Sure this hands you a nice way to mix up the old medal collecting process once in a while, and there’s some pretty cool cross-over action to be found. Yoshi meeting Sonic, Eggman Nega meeting Mario etc. I know it brought bit of a giggle out in me - the interaction between the characters was most welcome, even though it was all very plain and light-hearted for much of the dialogue. Remember the petri dish analogy I mentioned in my Wii version review? Not much deeper here at this end I’m afraid either. The locations in which all this takes place are pretty lame to say the least. You proceed through the adventure tour by completing missions, which will win over a character to add to your party or hand you a piece of equipment necessary to take part in a future mission. Again this is a nice addition and something the Wii version could have done with in of the Festival mode, but it all comes off rather cardboard an uninteresting. Like eating a cheap cheeseburger or Coles brand cheese-stick. Or in this case skiing over melting snow… with one ski!

The mini-games themselves normally work fairly well with only a few exceptions. Bobsleighing was the one of the events that actually came off more entertaining on the DS than it did on the Wii. And I never thought Figure Skating could have been much better, but it’s pulled off in style here on the DS. Shorter maybe, but more clever tapping and less mindless ‘mote waving. Like I mentioned above the DS version doesn’t just copy the events seen on the Wii, in fact it’s scrapped a couple and replaced them with brand new ones such as Dream Snow Machine and the Biathlon events. Unfortunately there is the odd event that just feels awful. Supersonic downhill, for example, is like Sonic Unleashed in many aspects – you go really fast, you can’t see where you’re going and by the time you’ve realised you’ve crashed you’re already snow-planted. There’s a sliver of screen where you can actually see what’s coming your way, but maybe I’m missing the point of this event and the idea is to memorize the slope and challenge yourself. Really scatty controls tended to bring the game down as well – in some sports you hold the Y button to charge, in some you hold the B, in some you control the characters with the stylus and in others you use the D-pad alone. Luckily the game leads you by the hand through most of the events so you never have to worry about such mundane things as knowing what to do or anything.

All characters seen on the Wii version are present here, and you are even treated to some flashy pic’s of them striking a pose whenever you select them in the character selection screen – which is cool and exclusive to this version. Though you can’t go shopping for custom paint-jobs and such like you can on the Wii, either. Graphics wise there’s surprisingly little colour. Even the Dream events do squat to take your mind off all that white. Nothing new to speak of in the audio room, unlike in the Wii version you can’t play to any Mario or Sonic beats, but it hasn’t fallen short of anything we heard coming from its predecessor. In Figure Skating there is only a selection of three classics, but the old favourite ‘The Nutcracker’ is still present, along with two exclusives.

It’s very casual stuff here, with little emphasis on any retro references and multiplayer appeal. Flavour from both teams crop up in every nook and cranny, from Omachao to shy-guys and the cutest fantasy creatures ever to be sketched: chao. The focus of is more on something quick and fun to play with a collection of familiar characters from two titanic franchises. Unfortunately the Adventure Mode feels like a rushed scramble of cross-over fanaticism and your basic explore-and-unlock shenanigans. The difficulty is up and down across the board, though that’s something you can fiddle with in the options menu (and something the Wii version ski’d over completely). It’s a good bundle of laughs and something to do in your spare time, but in this reviewers opinion the Wii version is the superior – just. Through and through there isn’t all that much difference in quality between the the two and if you’re a fan and don’t happen to own a Wii, this does deserve to be in your collection.