Mario & Sonic at Bejing Olympics Review by: Uzar - 6.5/10
Mario & Sonic's Olympic AdventureMario And Sonic at the Olympic Games. Boy that's a mouthful, and sounds mildly exciting. Surely with a title that long we would have a game just as big exciting too right? I Well if that's what you expected, stop right there and leave. This is not the game for you. :P
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games came out in 2008 alongside the Beijing Olympic Games. They have continued alongside Olympic events ever since as sort of a tie-in. And this being Mario and Sonic's first meeting outside of Smash Bros, who wasn't excited? Well...We still really need a crossover game from Nintendo and Sega. But until then, they'll always have Beijing...And Vancouver, and London, and Sochi, and Brazil...
Graphics: 9/10
The graphics in this game are actually pretty good! It's not exactly HD graphics, but these guys all look great on the Wii! Mario and co all look like they were lifted straight from their games. And so does Sonic's crew. And then they are thrown into a very real looking stadium. So as great as it all looks, there's an obvious clash of art styles at times. They look great! And great as ever...at the time. They soon both got sequels which showed them all off better. But for the shining moment of that summer, Mario and Sonic never looked better!
The backgrounds are okay. The stadiums are all well made, and look pretty close to their real life counterparts. However unlike those real life counterparts, they filled the viewer areas with an audience of chaos, toads, flickies, koopas, and other small critters from both games. This is really cool to see such a huge audience. But at closer distances, you can see how incredibly bad they look. They are really low resolution sprites. While having that many high detailed sprites plus the game going on, I can see how that would be hard on the Wii. But they up close it just looks...Bad. But it looks much better at a distance
But very unlike reality are the Dream Events. I'll dive a bit deeper into those later. But what they are are sports, but they take place in a location from a Mario or Sonic game, and also done very unrealistically. But those are my favorites because it's one step closer to what I wanted from a Mario and Sonic crossover. Which is them visiting each other's worlds.
Sound: 7/10
This game's sound is almost entirely recycled voice clips. I'm not even kidding about this. All of the Sonic character's voices came from previous games, and all of Mario's did also. Save for their lines when you pick them. The good thing would be that the voice clips sound clean and crisp. It wasn't a low quality rip. I think some of the characters have like one or two new voice clips for this game, but I don't remember. All I remember is that Mario characters had a few new ones, but Sonic characters were almost all recycled from earlier games.
The background music is...okay at best. Albiet very forgettable. The best part about it is, again, the Dream Events. They use music taken from previous Mario and Sonic games, and occasionally there's remixes of them also. I didn't expect much from the music, but I was a bit happy that there wasn't a song from either series that I disliked.
Addictiveness: 5/10
If you have someone to play this game with, this game is a blast! For awhile anyway. It depends on the person you're playing with really. If you don't, well...You may get a kick out of the Single Match. Which is a challenge mode. It's pretty challenging at times, but if you've played with a friend enough you'll have little trouble with it. Anyway, my little brothers seem to play this game nonstop. So I guess it does have higher appeal to some people. It's just not a game for me, I suppose.
Story: 0/10
The Story goes like this: Dr. Eggman has perfected the Genesis Wave, or so he thought. He sucueeded in rebooting the universe, but it also opened dimensional rifts. Using these rifts he traveled to our world. Sonic and his friends quickly followed before Eggman could cause trouble in either worlds. He ended up in the middle of Beijing in time for the Olympics. There, he saw the ceremony as the native people worshipping him, their new master who appeared through a hole in the sky. Sonic and his friends never stepped back from a challenge, so they entered the Olympic Games under the flag of Mobius. Which confused the officials overseeing the games.
At the same time Professor E.Gadd opened a rift harnessing the chaos energy caused by the Wave too. He assumed that this was the work of Rosalina resetting the universe. But opening up the dimensional borders; he found our world too! In Beijing too, mind you. So he invites Mario and Luigi to come and explore this new world. Peach happily joins along with a reluctant Toadsworth as diplomats to this world. Their various buddies join Mario as they go through into the new world. But Bowser shoves them out of the way and jumps in to capture Peach, and make an entire world ruled by himself. So as he jumps through the portal roaring and picking up Peach; all the contestants, along with audience members run from the stadium screaming. What with the freakish creatures to enter the arena only moments before, and the raging Koopa king. Nobody knows if the military or government was planning on doing something. But now with an empty stadium, Mario and crew realize there are a bunch of games set up. And knowing them, they jump at this golden opportunity to play completely new minigames!
The two otherworldly ambassadors meet under the torch, and quickly befriend each other. Also they realize that they are the only rivals standing between themselves, and some gold medals! (That is, if Wario and Waluigi didn't take them already...)Bowser and Eggman, however, are passive-aggressively competing for control of this new world through petty displays of dominance. Chaos, Flickies and other critters, Koopas, Shy Guys, and Goombas flood the audience to cheer for their friends/king/heroes.
And so; the competition between Team Mobius, and Team Mushroom Kingdom begins!
Well, that's what I choose to believe. If that's actually cannon then I'm changing this rating to 10/10
Depth: 4/10
There's barely any depth to this game. you can, however, unlock Dream Events <strike>Where our heroes take the new worlds ideas to their own worlds and invite each other over</strike> I mean versions of Olympic Sports with a twist to them, and taking place in a Mario or Sonic location. These modes are significantly more fun than their Olympic companions. You can also unlock music from various past games to play during these events. You can unlock music through various minigames. And Dream Events themselves are unlocked by collecting enough Gold Medals. There is no character to unlock, and there's not really a reward for beating Single Player mode
Difficulty: 5/10
Some of these games are a cakewalk in terms of difficulty. But then you get dream events, and games like Trampoline. Those are a huge spike in difficulty from the first few games you'll come across. Single Player is more like Challenge Mode. So there is a bit of difficulty there. All in all, the difficulty varies from "Easy" to "Mildly difficult"
The controls are almost entirely motion controls. For the racing events it's things like "Waggle the Wiimote as fast as you can to win". For Trampoline it's "Make all these wonky shapes by moving the Wiimote (which won't always pick up what you're doing)" It's not always bad for a Wii game to use motion controls. It's just that some games have more trouble with it than others.
Overall, this game is a fun party game. Playing with friends or family is the best way to get the most out of this game.
Just don't expect this game to be a Mario game, or a Sonic game. You'll be very dissappointed. With rights to such big series with lots of characters is impressive. The only sad thing is they're together to play sports, none of which show off any character's abilities. Wario can beat Sonic in a race. Enough said. :P
Overall: 6.5/10
Graphics
9 Sound
7 Addictive
5 Depth
4 Difficulty
5
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