Mario & Sonic make the olympic games great. (Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS))

Member Name: mr_nadge

Product:	Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS)
Date:	19/10/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun Gameplay. Lots Of Different Events. Good Use Of Stylus. Upload High Scores To The Leaderboard

Disadvantages: No Online Play Option. Some Challenges Might Be Too Hard. Bad For The Touch Screen

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is the first outing of both Nintendo & Sega's flagship characters in the same game. What a game it is too.

For anyone who ever player Olympic Gold in the past the premise for some of the events will be familiar. For anyone who hasn't, they will be easy to get used to & simple to do. There are lots of different events. They are controlled in different ways. Sometimes with the stylus. Sometimes with the buttons & sometimes with both.

16 characters feature in this game with an even split of 8 characters from the Mario world & 8 from Sonic's. The characters all have their own strengths & weaknesses & are divided into 4 catagories. Power, All Round, Speed & Skill.

There is a good mixture of events. Track & field have running, jumping & throwing events. Aquatics have Swimming & Diving. Gymnastics brings you Vault & Trampoline. There is Arhcery, Shooting, Table Tennis, Fencing & a Dream Events section which has different versions of some events plus some new ones like Basketball & Boxing. There is something for everyone. Plus the way different games are played adds real variety to the play. Table Tennis is with the buttons. Fencing & Basketball with flicks of the stylus. Running by waddling the stlyus side to side. Jumping & Javenlin, waddling followed by a flick. All easy to learn & hours to master.

One of the negative accusations levelled against Mario Kart is that it can be completed & everything unlocked in a day. This might be true, but it isn't of this game. You are challenged to win a Gold Medal in every event, with every character. There are also circuits of events (Anything from 3-5) which work like a tournament earning points from each event. 16 of these to win a trophy in. Then there are the missions. 6 for each character totaling 24. Their are emblems to unlock such as winning a game of Tennis 5-0 or completing a perfect round of Archery (30 point score). Nobody is going to get through this in a weekend or even a week.

All the plus points above still don't include the best part of the single player game. The ability to take your high score, upload it to the network & see where exactly your score ranks amongst every player in the world who has uploaded their scores. 100's of thousands of players have done this. My first effort at the 100m had me outside the top 100,000 & I'm still not much better at that. Whether it's my favourite even or not, I'm best at Triple Jump which has me inside the top 2000 players. Not bad after a weekend.

Multiplayer options are very good, but not perfect. Single Card Download play allows up to 4 people to play against each other in 5 events. Multi- Card play allows for play at everything. I think the one letdown is not being able to play against people over the internet. It would have been fun.

This is a great game. It might be a game comprising of loads of little ones. Some of the games are controlled in a similar fashion & you can't play online. However, these are three minor points when you consider the variety on offer, the fun that can be had & the longevity factor of this game. Whether you want a real sporting challenge or a quick bash, this is the best sports game on Nintendo DS. Until I get Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games! See you at A & E with repetitive strain injury soon!

Summary: One Of The Best Games On The Console & Great For Casual Gamers & Die Hards Alike.