Game Review: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games For Nintendo Wii

As an avid gamer, I was very interested to finally get my hands on this game and see how it played out. With past Olympic video game hit-and-misses in mind, I couldn't help but be skeptical of how good this game could possibly be.

On the other hand, I don't remember ever being disappointed by a game featuring America's favorite plumber, Mario (I even enjoyed the odd Paper Mario series some years back).

So as I inserted the game into the Wii system I was hoping for the best, yet prepared for the worst. Unfortunately for me, my experience yielded the latter result. The game was a complete disappointment for me.

Any die-hard Nintendo gamer knows the magic that Mario games deliver. Normally they are simply non-stop fun from beginning to end. In this game however, you are welcomed by a typical main menu where you can select different brackets of events. That part of the game is just fine.

The problem I have with this game is the game play itself. One can't help but compare this game to Wii Sports, the disc that is included when you buy a Nintendo Wii System. Once compared, M&S at the Olympic Games fails to deliver Sports' smooth controls and sheer fun.

The only instance winning a match on Olympic Games may be if you are playing with a friend. Then maybe you can obtain bragging-rights and gloat, but on one-player mode it's just completing a series of monotonous button-presses and remote swings.

For example, one of the events is Table Tennis (the event that I most looked forward to playing). This is just a swing party as you constantly hit the ball back and forth with little control. This can be challenging (which at least gives the game some life) but it would be nice to actually control the direction of the ball other than just reacting to your opponent's hit.

Another event is the trampoline. In this event you swing the remote in a bouncing motion about 5 times and then quickly press the displayed buttons before your character lands back on to the trampoline. Not a lot of creativity there.