Athens 2004 (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 1.5 stars Poor
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 3.6 (1.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Ryan Davis
• Reviewed on: 11/11/2004
• Released on: 11/05/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: Athens 2004 (PC) Review

When Athens 2004 hit the PlayStation 2 in July of this year, it seemed like a fairly uninspired but somewhat necessary exercise. The summer games had arrived, someone needed to make a new video game following in the tradition of Track & Field, and Eurocom was saddled with the task. Now it's November--time for the heavy winter coats and long nights--and in a rather baffling move, Athens 2004 is just now appearing on the PC. Aside from showing up well after the party is over, Athens 2004 for the PC has been gutted of its four-player support, as well as some of the more enjoyable minigames found in the considerably more relevant PlayStation 2 version.

Comparisons to Track & Field are easy to make here, simply because Athens 2004 is little more than a collection of athletically inclined minigames. There are 20 different events for you to compete in, and there are a variety of different ways for you to do so. There's a handy practice mode, which is absolutely essential for understanding the somewhat cryptic nuances of a few of the games. You can choose to compete in a one-off event or in a series of events, such as a decathlon or a heptathlon. If the prefabricated competitions don't suit your liking, you can also generate your own custom competition by cherry-picking the events that you enjoy the most. A big part of the appeal of Athens 2004 on the PlayStation was that it nurtured the inherently competitive nature of the games with full four-player support. This has been knocked down to two players on the PC, though single-system multiplayer just feels kind of out of place on the PC.

The events themselves include a decent cross section of competitions from the summer Olympic Games, including dashes of various lengths, hurdles, the long jump, the high jump, the triple jump, the pole vault, the discus throw, the javelin throw, the shot put, aquatic races of various lengths, weight lifting, archery, and skeet shooting. Gone is the equestrian competition, which felt like a really strange choice when it appeared in the PlayStation 2 version to begin with, but the complete absence of gymnastic events stands out as a big omission, especially considering the incredible popularity of those events in the real Olympic Games. The mechanics of most of the games in Athens 2004 boil down to mashing two buttons as fast as you can and occasionally tapping a third. But despite this extreme simplicity, the game's implementation of abstract, esoteric meters can make some of the events needlessly confusing, simply because there is not often an obvious correlation between what the meter represents and what's happening onscreen. Although what you're seeing onscreen changes, you don't get much sense of variety in the actual gameplay between these events.

Once you figure out the game's cryptic interfaces, it's just a matter of endurance. The game is an absolute nightmare on the fingers. Few other games these days are so demanding of continuous, rapid-fire button pressing, so if you're not used to this type of mechanic, you may well find yourself with cramped hands after playing Athens 2004.

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