NGAMER #35 – Wii Review – Winter Sports ‘09

WINTER SPORTS 2009, THE NEXT CHALLENGE – REVIEW
Cross-platform winter sports title skids onto Wii

FORMAT: Wii, PUBLISHER: RTL SPORTS, DEVELOPER: 49 GAMES, PRICE: £30, OUT: NOW

It didn’t half snow in February, did it? Feeling nostalgic, we booted up Winter Sports 2009 hoping for a quick hit of snow-filled sporting frolics. Our enthusiasm soon melted away like a snowball down our pants, however.

Winter Sports is the sort of title that lives or dies by the quality of its events. Alas, they’re a bit dull. The modes are all similar – Career sees you levelling up your skills (the English commentator had the cheek to scoff at us for choosing a UK competitor), singles mode lets you practise each event individually and Challenge gives you impossibly specific tasks to complete. Amazingly, the controls are pretty responsive, with a mass of specific instructions for each event.

Ice rage
The half-pipe snowboarding and skating challenges are decent and curling stands out as a joy when mastered. Sadly, these are small exceptions. The rest of the events are near identical, such as bobsleigh, skeleton and luge, which force you to use the remote like a steering wheel. Irritating, over-sensitive and just plain baffling, it’s the scratch that exposes the game’s lack of variety and depth. Having to unlock a gold medal every time to unlock other events sent a chill down our spines and the balance board support makes events even more confusing.

Overall presentation is sub-par, though there’s a photo of speed skater Anni Friesinger on the box if that floats your boat. Turn off the commentary as soon as you can because doing so gives you a chance to hear the quite brilliant funk soundtrack – the only real gold medal in Winter Sports 2009.

Caption: Good job we have pert behinds here at NGamer…

VERDICT:
GRAPHICS: 5
AUDIO: 7
GAMEPLAY: 6
INNOVATION: 4

NG SUMMARY – 58%
Pretty good motion controls, so why ruin them with bog standard events? We wanted to enjoy this one, but it left us cold.