Summer Athletics review (Wii)

With the Olympics on as we speak, it was no real shock that both official and unofficial games found their way onto the shelves. It was pretty inevitable that the Wii and its motion sensor control would also get in on the action. But is Summer Athletics on the Wii really a game that can be played waving your arms around like a mad man, or should we stick with traditional button bashing?

Pure Skill?

Summer Athletics has three game modes the player can choose from. The single event mode allows you to do just the one event from the seven available disciplines and is a good way of practising before trying the other two modes. Competitions mode has five pre arranged competitions the player can do, all of which have certain events available to do depending on the competition you have entered. For example the Decathlon competition has events such as the 100m sprint, Long jump and Pole Vault.

With both of these game modes, the game type can be changed. Choose from Arcade Mode and Pure Mode. Arcade mode concentrates more on fun and not skill. Your athlete has five boosts available to them in each competition which will give you that little bit more of an advantage. Pure Mode is the exact opposite it might shock you to find out. Pure Mode is all about skill and pulling out a top performance. Only the best performances will allow you to win those all important medals.

Become an Olympian

The third game mode is based around the Olympic Games and its format. The Career mode allows you to take your game character through the games, trying to amass as many points and medals as possible and it’s all about the performance, using the games Pure Mode only. You start you career by firstly selecting your country and create your players image.

You can of course choose the country you perform for in each game mode, but you can also create your own player as well. You have the option to use the basic model, or you can fine tune them by changing individual aspects of their face model. Unfortunately you don’t have a lot of control over each of these aspects, so if you are trying to create a virtual Olympian based on your own looks, you will struggle.

Once you have decided which country your performing loyalty lies with, you need to fine tune your athletes skills. Your athlete has five basic skills which are; Speed, Technique, Power, Jump Power and Stamina, all pretty self explanatory I’m sure you’ll agree.

Starting from the bottom

Your athlete will start with 20 points on each skill before your career begins. You’ll then be given a total of 50 points to spread out between these five skills before you go any further. Once you have distributed them how you wish, your career begins.

Starting as an amateur your aim is to start from the very bottom and build your Olympian up into a world beater and to do so you will compete in different events in different disciplines. Every time you finish an event you will then be given another 100 points to spread out between the five skills your athlete possesses and this amount of points you earn never changes. If you do really badly in an event you’d still receive the full 100 points, which means it isn’t very long until you do make your athlete the world beater it’s meant to become.

Making things complicated

However there is one thing stopping you from becoming World Class and winning all in your site. Well actually two. The actual game and also your ability and skill level when playing. I’ve played the career championship several times and quite frankly I’m rubbish and still haven’t got past the amateur championship.

But this isn’t all down to me being completely pants. This game is at times impossible to play and bearing in mind kids will play this and it is being aimed at them as well as adults, it is extremely complicated at times.

I’m 22 and have played many, many games. However this has to be one of the most complicated and infuriating games I have ever come across. The instructions for many of the events are not well written, very complicated and some near impossible to understand. It will take several attempts before it clicks what you are supposed to do.

Consistency is key...

Even then you may not get the performance you were expecting from your athlete. It seems that some events just don’t work well with the controller and sensor for the Wii. An example would be cycling. The idea is to move your hands in a pedalling motion, which isn’t the problem, that part works well. The problem comes when you are trying to steer your athlete. It either doesn’t respond, or responds too well and you find yourself turning too much and losing precious time.

There have also been times when I’ve read the instructions for the event, understood what I’m supposed to do and started well. The technique I am using doesn’t change but the performance of the athlete does. It acts like the motions you are making aren’t registering with the game. An example of a problem I had was with the Javelin. Holding the controller like a Javelin and advised to have the front of the controller facing away from the sensor, I did well in my first attempt and ranked quite high. Keeping the same technique for the next attempt my throw never registered and my athlete fouls running straight over the board. Frustrating, especially when it is in one of the events you actually have a chance of winning.

...but so is having fun

Summer Athletics could have been a great bit of competition for the official Olympics game. However kids will quickly lose interest as they simply will not be able to understand a lot of the instructions and won’t be able to perform, coming last more times than not. It quickly knocks the fun out of playing.

There are a lot of events in the game and using the controller like a javelin or a bow for the archery event (which works really well by the way) is what you come to expect from Wii games. However some games still do not work well using the controller this way. If there was a race between the Wii's method of playing the game and the traditional button bashing method, I’m afraid it would be the button bashing that would win by a county mile.

If you’re looking for an athletics game to play on the Wii for a bit of family fun, I’m afraid this isn’t it. I would however recommend renting the game for a weekend. There is fun to be had with this game, but only in certain events and it’s not worth spending your hard earned cash to own the game, as it won’t come out of the box too often.