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Summer Athletics is one of the titles cashing-in on this year’s
Olympic games, going up against rival and official title Beijing
2008, but it has ended up looking more like a last-gen effort.
Summer Athletics focuses its gameplay on a range of events, 26 in
total, from sprinting, swimming, archery and cycling, mainly
concentrating on the track, field and water events. It’s not a
comprehensive list, and actually offers ten fewer disciplines than
Beijing 2008, but it at least offers the most popular.
The problems begin when the controls are explained. Sprinting is
kept nice and simple, just waggle the right stick. Then there’s the
cycling which is a little more complicated; wiggle the right-stick
back and forth while steering with the left. Then hold the left
trigger to sprint, but you have to wiggle the right stick in a
different direction while keeping an eye on your stamina and pulling
the right trigger to change places with a team-mate. Controls to a
good game should not make you rip your controller in half by accident.
The rest of the events range from simplistic and fun to overly
complicated and impossible.
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Also, for a game whose key premise is competition it’s a shame
that Xbox Live has been completely ignored. Split screen has been
included but the quality of the presentation is so poor that it
is quite disorientating. This seems to have been recognised by
the developer, it also offers a ‘Hot-seat’ way of racing where
players take it in turns, removing any semblance of competition.
Ultimately the fun Summer Athletics offers is sucked away by the
shoddy visuals and laughable controls.
David L
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