Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Review

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Review

Introduction

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games is the sequel to to Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. It follows the core formula of the old game, but has some new games, modes, and characters added into the mix. I never played Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games for the Wii, but I did play the DS version. And it was good, but got boring after a while due to a lack of replay value, and it didn't exactly nail a large content amount that this kind of game should have. I got Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, hoping it would better, and it was exactly that.

Graphics.

(Here is a link to an image, doesn't allow me to show it:http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/7...ng_9_super.jpg)
While this game isn't made for graphics, I feel that it was lacking. The characters looked a tad bit shiny, and very blocky. The textures and environments didn't have much detail, and mostly look bland and single colored. But I think the animations were great. I didn't really find any problem with the animation. But the rest of the graphics look like something the Gamecube could possibly do, and with the way SEGA and Nintendo has been delivering graphics lately, I expected a lot better.

Music/ Sound Effects

I think the music made for this game is kind of good, but has a couple of problems. The theme is WAY overused. I wish they would've had more of a variety. It was also very generic, and nothing special. But the music pulled from the Mario games and the Sonic games was great. I remembered a lot of it from Sonic Heroes and Sonic Adventure 2. But the Mario music... was Mario music at normal. As for the sound effects, I think most of them are realistic and sound great.

Controls

Each Event has its on individual controls, but it's mostly simplistic. The general controls are, B to use items, Plus to pause, Minus to show controls, tilt the Wiimote to move, move joystick to move in some events, A for selecting things, or to throw shells in the Dream Gliding Event, and Z to lock on in Snowball Fight. It's mostly good, all the button placements are fine, but the tilting isn't sensitive enough. Now I can understand this in the Bobsleigh event, but in Skeleton, and all the Skiing and Snowboard events this is completely unacceptable. But besides that, the controls are great.

Gameplay

The gameplay is fun, but can get boring, even with all the extras to unlock.
You have a Records menu, where you can see the records on all the events you have played and everyone on the Nintendo Wii console. You can also look up records on Nintendo WFC, but my Wii internet isn't working at the time of this review.
To the side of that, you can select the Shop. The Shop has music from Sonic, Mario, and the rest of this game's music you can buy with the stars you earn in the games, you can also buy outfits for different characters such as Dry Bones, Diddy Kong, Sonic, Shadow, Mario, Bowser, and more. You can also buy individual pieces such as shoes and other things. There is also a place called XYZ in the Shop where you can buy the different Star Cards and objects to decorate with. I think the Shop was a great addition, and it is this game's main replay value point.

There are also the Party Games which I absolutely hate. I played all of the Party Games but one, and they are boring. One of them involves a person being a leader, and trying to get 1st in the events to beat that leader. You gain points, and after four repetitive rounds the score is tallied and the results come in. There is also another one in which you have to cover squares using you character. But you can't move until you've gotten mobility, which you gain through events. 1 for 4th place, 2 for 3rd place, 3 for 2nd place, and 4 for 1st place. Now every time I played this, my other teammate would get 4th in every event, making it almost impossible to beat unless you almost got 1st every time. Overall, these Party Games are absolute trash, and I do NOT recommend playing them.
And now for the final and main part of the game play, the Winter Games. Now when you get into this part of the Menu you have multiple things to select from. You can choose to play an Event alone or with 4 other people, and you can do Festival alone or with 4 other people. Let's say you selected Festival.
Festival is kind of a story mode thing without any story. You have team Festival, where you work with a team and do different events to get the most points at the end of the Festival, which is after a certain amount of days. There is also a Solo Festival where it's Festival, but without teams. You can also face rivals, which are non playable characters that you have to beat in events. The one I took most note of was Dry Bones, because he was the hardest due to how boring, frustrating, and long Curling is on this game. But other than him they're all fairly easy to beat, along with the rest of the Festival. You have a chance to go to the Shop every few days and buy stuff with the stars you have earned in Festival, but I didn't bother with the Shop until after I finished both Solo Festival and Team Festival.
After you have finished Festival, you can play the events whenever you want, choose your own characters and even make a custom team. When making a team, I would recommend choosing one of all the types of Characters, it makes a great team. Speaking of characters, there are 4 or 5 characters of each Skill, Power, Speed, or All-Around type. Each character will have a certain amount of skill in each type, but whatever they have most of determines which category they're in. For instance, Silver has a decent amount of speed, but has most of Skill, therefor unlike the other hedgehogs, he's place in Skill Type. I think this system works great. Now back on topic to taking, about the events. There are about 10 or so events in each category, being Dream and Regular. The event amount has increased a bit since the last game, which is always a good thing. The events contain things such as Bobsleigh, Skiing, Snowboarding, Ice Skating, and etc. The dream events are just crazy version of these. An example is the Ski Jump. In Dream Ski Jump, you do the normal jump, but you're in the Good Egg Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy. You then keep the jump position, and fly through the galaxy, collecting giant star bits on the way for points. At the end you land on a giant star, and you can get extra points for landing in a good spot. I think the Dream Events were great, and even better than the ones in the last game. I am not going to talk about all the events individually, but I am gonna talk about my favorites and least favorites. My all time favorite is the Snowball Fight. Snowball Fight is a Dream event, where you have a snowball fight, like the title says. You lock on to people, swing to throw snowballs at them and get 1 point for every it. But if you knock them out, you get 3 points. On the line separating the two teams areas, item boxes will appear. In the you may get a Bullet Bill, Invincibility, or the ability to hold 15 snow balls for a time period. It's actually quite fun, and I enjoyed the competitiveness of it. I also want to talk about another event Bobsleigh. In Bobsleigh, you ride in a Bobsleigh with 3 other people, and try to keep your Bobsleigh on a line to accelerate and gain speed. If you play it with other people, you have to tilt with them, and try to cooperate, which can be a nice challenge. In the Dream version of Bobsleigh, you go through the tunnels that were in the Sonic Heroes special stages, and collect the balls that would speed you up in the Special Stages, and in this, it does the same thing. It can be a challenge to keep the Bobsleigh on course, but that just increases the fun. Now to talk about my least favorite event, Curling. Curling in this game is completely boring. It's also really frustrating, and the instructions aren't very clear. It took me about 2 hours to beat Dry Bones in it, and I only failed twice. Dream Curling is even worse, because the items can really screw you up. I hope to never have to play this terrible event again. Overall the gameplay is entertaining, exciting, fun, and sorta challenging, but still easy to pick up and play.

Final Word

Overall, I think this game is a good rent, maybe a buy if you really like it. I hope they make another one of these, see how they can improve it again.
Story: N/A
Graphics: 5.7/10
Music: 8.13/10
Controls: 8/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Overall: 7.5825 or 7.6