Salt Lake 2002

"Best Olympic game ever? No. Or is it...? No."

Salt Lake 2002 was the first Olympic game I've ever bought, and I only bought it because I live in Utah, where the Olympic games were. So basically, I was having high hopes to be able to have nice ride with this game to remember what it was like to have the Olympics around, but this game just reminded me of my bad temper. Constantly. It was a great idea, but poorly gone about and not very professionally done. It seemed like it was quite rushed through to get out to the markets in time.

Graphics - 8/10
In contrast to the rest of the game, I thought the graphics were nice-looking, for the most part, with exception to the backgrounds and less important stuff of that nature. The people themselves are actually kind of scary looking, however. I mean that literally. There's different faces for each event, and there's some that look like blood lusting zombies. Most look somewhat normal though. The basic graphical effects you'll see when going down any of the courses, such as snow and wind, are satisfactory. The negative points are the out-of-course effects like inside the building where you choose which event you wish to play, and the medals ceremonies. Those can get PS1-ish.

The replays are very nifty-looking too. The camera angle switches are well-done, and resemble a TV-style camera setup. It also makes the courses look more real, and impressive when in replay mode. The arials and downhill skiing are very fun to watch.

Audio - 6/10
The soundtrack of this game is interesting. The songs don't really fit the mood of the game, and there's only about 5 different songs. So after awhile of listening to them, you'll get all the lyrics memorized and have one of those annoying songs stuck in your head for the rest of the day/week. But they would be OK listening through for just a first time, but no more than that.

Every one of the 16 teams has their national anthem in the game for use in the medals ceremony, which is a definite plus. And as far as the sound effects go, they work. Nothing special, but not bad, they get the job done.

Gameplay - 5/10
Unfortunately, the main part of the game (gameplay) falls short of my expectations. There are only 6 Olympic events you can compete in on this game. They are:

Men's Alpine Skiing Downhill
This course is among the best to chose from. You go down a hill (which takes about 1:30 total time) going through the gates at high speed. There's one part of the course where you WILL screw up on your first time through. Everybody does. But once you are aware of it and know what to do, you'll be fine. But unfortunately, if you do happen to miss a gate, go off track, wipe out, or even slow down too much, you will be disqualified with no second chance. So you have to do perfect the first time. This makes tournament mode on this event a beast.

Men's Ski Jumping K120 Individual
This course will deliver slight fun, but is mostly pointless. What bugs me about this is at the very beginning, a sign with numbers increasing then decreasing will show you the wind speed. It goes from 2.0 to 20.0 and you have to choose the wind speed yourself that will help you (higher is better). I just think that's ridiculous, because it's not a real element of this event and very unrealistic that you can choose the wind speed. Anyway, once you do that, you'll fly down the track, then push X at the end to jump. Adjust your skis up and down to gain distance until you land by pressing X again. If you wipe out you'll still get a high score, too high to be sensible.

Men's Snowboarding Parallel Giant Slalom
This is the only course that can be played simultaneous with a 2nd player, the rest are alternating turns. This is just another ski around the flags slalom, where first person to the bottom wins. It plays as a tournament mode in regular play, so you'll have to win 8 consecutive times to win. It's actually a pretty fun course, except it's really short (about 25 seconds).

Women's Alpine Skiing Slalom
Another skiing slalom. The control feels different on this one though, and missing a flag will not get you disqualified, since it's very difficult to get through without missing a single flag. It's a fun course once you get the hang of it.

Women's Freestyle Skiing Freestyle Aerials
This is definitely my favorite event in this game. You start by choosing one of about 30 different combos sorted by difficulty. The harder moves will be more complicated to complete in the air, but give you more points. You start the course by aligning your position by pressing X at the right time, then you start sliding down the course pushing left/right to finish alignment before you jump. When in the air, you do whichever moves you indicated at the beginning, and press button-arrow combos with good timing. You will land automatically depending on how good you did in the air. You'll then get an accurate (in my opinion) score based on your jump, and then do a second round.

Men's 2-Man Bobsleigh
Start by pushing Square and Circle alternating to push your Bobsled until you jump in. Then steer around the corners well to gain speed, while avoiding tip-overs. This course is a yawn, and you have little control (which is actually realistic), so this course is kind of boring.

Those are the 6 courses you can play. Of course they left out some of the best ones, like curling, biathlon, speedskating, among many others. You can connect this game to the PS2 Multitap for 4 player fun (if you can call it that), but all the courses are just alternating turns, so it's not a very great multiplayer game.

Tournament mode is exactly like the regular play mode, but you play the event more times, thus making it a tournament. Boooorrrrinnnng.

Then there's ''Classic'' mode. Now you play straight through all the events 3 times with increasing difficulty. No variation. Repetitive. Boring.

Now for the good points. Personal records are fun to go for rather than beating computers that you don't even get to see play. The high scores list is very detailed and displays all the top few scores for each difficulty of each event. You can also go into your personal profile to take a peak at your progress and top scores/times. This is a very nice feature. You can also check out your personal trophy room. As you go through the game, it shows you your percentage of how complete you have the game. I actually did get 100% meaning every single gold medal and trophy. But only because I had a lot of time, not because it was fun. I PROMISE. Anyway, that's your ultimate goal for the game, and after you DO finally get 100% complete, you will get no special features or congratulations, nothing. Just the ''100%'' text, and a false sense of satisfaction. Pretty disappointing. You can get this 100% by just getting the basic strategy to each course, which doesn't take long. Then you have to go through the INCREDIBLY REPETITIVE (MAN IT'S SO REPETITIVE) process of getting all the gold medals/trophies.

Replay - 4/10
Once you go through the game and get all the medals, there's no reason to come back to it. I haven't. I've played each of those 6 courses far too much already, and playing with a second (or third/fourth) player does not make this any more enjoyable. Luckily, this game only costed me $20 at Wal-Mart, but you'd do better to just rent this game. You'll like it until the 3rd day, at which point you will want to abandon it like it's a polka-dotted Pokémon.

Really, this should get a 5/10, but the box art looks nice and makes the game look better than it is, so 6/10 is final.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/08/02, Updated 07/08/02