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Like us you may be wondering where all the reviews are for Sega’s latest Olympics game Beijing 2008. Considering the game came out on the 27Th of June and so far not one major online site has reviewed it, initial perceptions due to this are that the game is sub par and being sent out to die on the shelf, falling into all good bargain bins very soon. Games of this type always have a habit of receiving poor review scores when in reality they usually offer a very good simple and fun multiplayer experience.  While we haven’t had much time on the game so far but we wanted to put our initial impressions out early given the lack of coverage on any other site.

With this being the first proper Olympics game of this console generation all of us here at ButtonBandits HQ had high hopes for the online mode. As you will read below the implementation of this is disappointing but good enough to offer a decent enough competitive experience in the form of it’s many online leader-boards. 38 events are offer in the game ranging from all the standard track and field events to the more unusual kayaking and Judo. Some of the new game modes work well, others not so much. Basically Beijing 2008 is a fun classic button basher offering a good mix of both button bashing and skill games, with a few new elements thrown in to bring the game up to date for this generation.

If you enjoy games of this classic gameplay type then you will have fun with Beijing 2008 in single player modes thanks to the challenge of the online leader boards. It’s the multiplayer experience where as always the game shines and provides simple fun gameplay. For more detailed info on game modes and how the online is implemented read below.

Beijing 2008 is produced by the same company that released Athens 2004 on PS2 (Eurocom). It’s nothing spectacular as you would expect for a game that’s probably got a low budget and isn’t going to sell too well. It is however a lot better than we thought it was going to be considering the total lack of publicity or reviews to be found anywhere. Basically if you like button bashers or any track and field style games then you should like it. It’s great fun in multiplayer. You have all the standard events you would expect but with quite a few new ones. Personally we prefer the traditional events as the judo has a bizarre control mechanism and the table tennis is boring as hell and can take a ridiculous amount of time to play, as can the shooting. You can however pick and choose the events to play in any tournament and as there’s 38 of them there’s plenty of events that everyone should enjoy. 

The game is obviously more fun in multiplayer but  there’s very few people online with a copy at the moment, enough to get a game but very low numbers. Maybe that will change when it comes out in the US next Friday and during the actual Olympics. Single player training mode is good fun as you can pick someone on your friends list then have their times imported in as a FR (friend record) and do the same event over and over till you beat it. We think the online leader-boards add to the replay value from a single player point of view. The leader-boards aren’t integrated properly into the events in other game modes though, you have to access them through the main menu, personally we thought this was a missed opportunity as setting high scores/records is what these games are all about. The world record is the real life world record in each event not the actual games online world record. The leader-boards are still there but hidden away on the main menu in all but practice mode and would have been far better had they been integrated into the actual gameplay experience rather than just the menus. This basically means if you beat the actual games online world record or go top of your friends leader-board you get no notification to having done so, only when you finish the game and go back to the menu, then go through the events leader-boards one by one would you find this out.

 
The main single player mode is Olympic mode where you start off with characters with no attributes and have to assign points to speed, stamina etc. Everything gets split up into days, so you get about 4 events per day and need to meet a qualifying time/score on a set amount of them to progress to the next day. you then get more points to allocate to your characters stats based on how well you did, so there’s an element of strategy there in terms of what to do to be good enough to progress through the events. If you fail too many events in a day then it’s game over and you cant progress to the next day. It adds a lot to the single player experience rather than just repeating the events time after time. Don’t expect to set any fast times or high scores in this mode though as the characters are far slower and less powerful than in practice and standard competition modes.

The biggest change to the standard track events in gameplay terms is  the start power meter, where you have to hold the trigger down to build up power, when it goes into the red you start running, so you have to time a slow build up to the red or hover it around the top carefully and then going into the red when the gun goes. On the 100m for example it puts the majority of the emphasis on getting a good start so simulating how the event plays out in real life. Were not sure if this is a good idea or not yet, it does add something new but on the swimming events for example, it’s very easy to go top speed, so the only thing that ends up separating winners is the start and change over success using this system, The top speed possible seems far to low to be able to offer varied finish times. We managed 35th in the world on 100m butterfly within a few attempts, only 0.03 seconds off 2ND place in the world. First place on this event is currently listed as being a bugged 00:00. Hopefully leader-boards will not be ruined by glitched times as this could ruin the competitive nature of the game. Presently we are only aware of two glitched times across all 38 leader-boards.

We haven’t had much time on the game so far but what we have seen in general has been good. It was never going to set the world on fire and elements of the game could have been better implemented but as it is the game is simple fun and competitive. If you have always enjoyed games of this type in the past then this release will be no different. The only issue is the price as we are sure it will drop fairly rapidly over the next few months, given the lack of publicity surrounding the game which will no doubt be reflected in sales and therefore inevitably price.