GameSpot editors' review
-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
Mediocre
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 01/23/2008
- Updated on: 07/31/2009
- Released on: 12/11/2007
If you were to look at Winter Sports: The Ultimate Challenge and see it as a shoddy attempt to capitalize on the Wii's overwhelming popularity with a substandard sports compilation, you'd be right--but only half right. As you'll see, it's also directly based on the underwhelming Torino 2006, which was itself a shoddy attempt to capitalize on the last Winter Olympics. Diminishing returns is the name of the game with Winter Sports, and its failure to do anything interesting with the Wii's motion controls keeps it from rising above the mediocre legacy of its similar predecessor.
The action is spread across nine different events. You've got downhill racing (alpine skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton, and luge), plus the level-terrain variety (speed skating and cross-country skiing), and a grab bag of ski jumping, curling, and figure skating. Several of these offer additional disciplines, but the differences are pretty minimal; for example, there are more laps in speed skating, and you launch from a bigger ramp in ski jumping. Among the events featured in the game, the alpine-skiing category makes the best use of the Wii's motion controls. You race downhill with remote and Nunchuk held flat, twist them from side to side to weave in and out of the flags, and pull them back to slow down. It works decently enough, but doesn't really offer any advantage beyond the analog-stick steering of old.
Sadly, "decent" describes the level of quality where the controls reach their peak. The rest of the sports are substantially worse. In the level-terrain racing events, you'll find yourself simply pushing the remote and Nunchuk back and forth either as frantically as humanly possible (speed skating) or in a sleep-inducing rhythm (cross-country). Bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton require you to hold the remote sideways and use it to simply avoid hitting the wall too hard. Furthermore, ski jumping has you flicking the controllers up to jump, down to land, and using an oddly placed mechanism to keep yourself balanced, as if there were some magically invisible rail from Tony Hawk that you were trying to grind. At best, these robotically simple controls do little to engross you in the sports they're trying to mimic; at worst, they'll lull you into a deep sleep.
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