VANCOUVER 2010

Developer: Eurocom

Platform: 360 / PS3 / PC

Genre: Sport

Rating: G

Ice hockey or bust

Vancouver 2010, as you might guess, is the official video game of this year’s Winter Olympic Games. Last year we had the Mario & Sonic take on the Olympics, which offered mini-game versions of several Winter Olympic events. What’s kind of strange is that Vancouver 2010 pretty much does exactly the same thing, sans plumbers and hedgehogs. Vancouver 2010 looks good, with clean presentation and all the perks of official licensing.

It looks good out on the snow too, and being able to press a button to enter a first-person perspective during events is very cool. But this is where the excitement ends. For a start, there are very few events actually available to play, less events in fact than the Mario & Sonic title. There are 14 events on offer, which translates to six sports with variants, including ski jumping, speed skating and luge.

There’s no ice hockey, no curling – I mean, not even curling, one of the most iconic winter sports! Each event is played as a basic minigame that is enjoyable once or twice, but the level of fun degrades drastically with each additional go. There’s nothing resembling a proper career mode, just the ability to go for gold in each event and some bare-bones multiplayer, as well as a few challenges that lazily attempt to extend the gameplay. If you’re really keen on an Olympics title, pick up Mario & Sonic. It features Mario and ice hockey.

*½      

TOASTFARMER

VVVVVV

Developer: www.thelettervsixtim.es

Platform: PC / MAC

Genre: Platform

Rating: Unrated

Indie platformer makes gravity your bitch

You are the captain and your crew, whose names all start with V, have accidentally been teleported to a strange dimension called VVVVVV – the real reason for that absurd name, however, is that in its simplistic retro graphics the spikes covering every second surface look like rows of Vs. You will become intimately familiar with those spikes. VVVVVV is a platformer, but one that takes away a typically essential part of the genre – jumping. You, like the White Men in that movie, can’t jump. Fortunately, you can flip gravity on its ear when you’re standing on a solid surface. Rather than leaping pits, you fall to the ceiling, then tumble back down on the safe side. This elegant mechanic is the source of many ingenious puzzles. Sometimes platforms move or dissolve or trampolines fling you around or you have to lead a rescued crewmate who only follows when you’re touching the ground but – the doofus – will follow you to his death.

There is a lot of death. VVVVVV’s traps are often incredibly hard and not made easier by how twitchily quick you move or the fact even a spike’s blunt side will kill you. In its favour checkpoints are everywhere, lives unlimited and you return after death instantly. VVVVVV isn’t a big game or a fancy one, but it does the one thing it does well. However, if you aren’t possessed by nostalgia for the days when platformers were screen-smackingly hard, this won’t be for you.

***     

DEADMEAT