Vancouver 2010 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows)

The requisite game preceding the Winter Olympic Games, VANCOUVER 2010 lets players choose a country and then get busy competing for gold in 14 events in the categories of alpine skiing, sledding, speed skating, freestyle skiing, snowboarding, and ski jumping. You can choose to train, enter events individually, or create a customized stack of events. A challenge mode offers a series of increasingly difficult goals in each event, such as earning a set number of points for maintaining higher speeds while skiing. Up to four players can compete locally in split-screen play or online, and you can compare your performance against other players around the world via online leader boards.

There’s really not a lot to separate Sega’s latest Olympics simulation from past entries in the genre. The lifelike graphics, which feature motion-captured digital athletes skiing through low hanging clouds on crisply defined mountains, are among the best yet in an Olympics game, though not substantially better than those of Beijing 2008. And though we’re given 14 events, many are similar enough to one another (such as Women’s Giant Slalom, Women’s Slalom, Men’s Downhill, Men’s Super-G) that it feels as though there are really only a handful of meaningfully different activities.

That said, the challenge mode, with a surprisingly high level of difficulty, and multiplayer play all help extend the game’s life. What’s more, the controls are precise and empowering -- assuming you aren’t using the awkward motion sensing feature that exists as an option in the PlayStation 3 edition. Still, it seems unlikely most players will come back after spending 15 or 20 minutes with each event. What’s here is decent, but there needs to be more diversity.

Online interaction: Four player online play exists, though we were unable to evaluate it at the time of this writing. Common Sense Media does not recommend online play for pre-teens. Players can also view online leaderboards showing the performance of other players.