These Olympic Games are some of the more exhausting games to work through, although I’ve been told that they do get better. While I enjoyed the first DS game more than the Wii version, I did not enjoy the DS version of Winter Games at all.
The big feature of Olympic Winter Games DS is the Adventure Tour. This is an RPG-like adventure where you gather team members, unlock new abilities and find equipment, all with a story.
It sounds nice on paper, but unfortunately is extremely tedious. The dialogue is extremely dry (and as Mario isn’t a very talkative character, they also don’t give Sonic any dialogue, so Toad is the main spokesperson), and the areas you explore are designed so you need to do a lot of backtracking and wandering back and forth. The areas are maze-like, with springs and pipes used to make navigation more difficult. You will also encounter missions you can’t play until you find items in treasure chests. You also have limited hearts (which you can find in objects like jars), but losing them all just means you have to walk back to the event you were trying.
It’s a shame as the events are quite fun, and are actually more varied than the Wii game. For Skiing you have a 2D race (on a course that reminds me of Excitebike), a biathlon version which has a shooting section after each lap, you have a ski jump and a dream ski jump (the latter involves flying through rings), a 3D race where you have to steer through laps and a 2D downhill ramp where you have to avoid obstacles and feels like something from Sonic Rush.
The missions themselves also add rules, or focus on specific parts, such as needing to do a boost start, a shooting game (where thankfully you tap at targets on the touch screen) where you have to hit a particular colour, go for distance in a long jump. If the game had been a list of missions on a menu, it would have been very enjoyable, but the aimless wandering between them takes up far more time than actually playing the game.
The big feature of Olympic Winter Games DS is the Adventure Tour. This is an RPG-like adventure where you gather team members, unlock new abilities and find equipment, all with a story.
It sounds nice on paper, but unfortunately is extremely tedious. The dialogue is extremely dry (and as Mario isn’t a very talkative character, they also don’t give Sonic any dialogue, so Toad is the main spokesperson), and the areas you explore are designed so you need to do a lot of backtracking and wandering back and forth. The areas are maze-like, with springs and pipes used to make navigation more difficult. You will also encounter missions you can’t play until you find items in treasure chests. You also have limited hearts (which you can find in objects like jars), but losing them all just means you have to walk back to the event you were trying.
It’s a shame as the events are quite fun, and are actually more varied than the Wii game. For Skiing you have a 2D race (on a course that reminds me of Excitebike), a biathlon version which has a shooting section after each lap, you have a ski jump and a dream ski jump (the latter involves flying through rings), a 3D race where you have to steer through laps and a 2D downhill ramp where you have to avoid obstacles and feels like something from Sonic Rush.
The missions themselves also add rules, or focus on specific parts, such as needing to do a boost start, a shooting game (where thankfully you tap at targets on the touch screen) where you have to hit a particular colour, go for distance in a long jump. If the game had been a list of missions on a menu, it would have been very enjoyable, but the aimless wandering between them takes up far more time than actually playing the game.