Common Sense Media Review
By Chad Sapieha
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Average Olympics game has nice graphics but not many events.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 8+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
Videos and Photos
Vancouver 2010
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's It About?
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.
Is It Any Good?
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.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about whether the game accurately depicts each of its 14 sports. Are you familiar with many of them? Does the game make you want to try any of these events yourself? What, do you think, is the value of the including events in the Games that many people will have no experience with or knowledge of?
Families can also discuss what the Olympics mean to them. Do you well up with national pride when you see American athletes perform well on an international stage, even though you may never have heard of them or not understand their sport? Do you think that the Games successfully bring countries closer together and foster a feeling of global community?
Game Details
- Platforms : PlayStation 3 , Windows , Xbox 360
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Available online
- Publisher : Sega of America
- Release date : January 12, 2010
- Genre : Sports
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : June 19, 2019
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