Nagano Winter Olympics '98

"I thought the gold medal is a good thing. pheh."

INTRODUCTION

I had never played an olympic game in my life before. They had either never been in or never gotten my attention. But finally I got my hands on Nagano 98 with a friend of mine for two nights and I was excited to play it. We popped it in the PSX the second we got home, and we started playing. It was a decent time for the first, hmmm, fifteen minutes or so.



GAMEPLAY

It's very hard to describe just why this game is terrible. I suppose I should start with the events though. There are fifteen events. These include bob sledding skiing, ski jumfing, and many other typical winter olympic events that require snow and ice. Well, out of the fifteen, a big goose egg of them are fun. You compete in certain events, win, and score big with medals and points. More Um that is about it. There's no other point. There's really no long term gameplay either, as any mode in the game is easily completed in ten minutes. There would be no need for a memory card if this was the only game you owned, which I pray to God it isn't. You shouldn't even own Nagano 98 at all.

However, the modes are just the beginning as to why this game's terrible. The biggest fault in the game is the control. In skiing, the buttons do zilch. Zip. Nada. Zero. Nothing. Talk about a waste! I even checked to see if the controller was in the port securely because the game was going so weird on me. It might have well just have gone left when I hit right and would've been better than what I got. Even if you try to do something spectacular in the air, you'll land right on your butt when you land. The control in Nagano 98 is atrocious and just makes the game even worse. And if you're expecting a fast paced wild ride on a bob sland, well, get ready for a surprise. You usually are going slow the whole time. Amazingly, the computer can do what you wish you could do, but we'll get to that later. I want to get on with something else about the game, this gameplay's about ready to give me a terrible disease from thinking about it. As if they didn't torture me enough by making me play the game!

Uh, well, I hope you weren't expecting one of my indepth sections, because I can't go any more indepth. The game has a bunch of crappy modes and atrocious control. That's all there is to the game.

GAMEPLAY SCORE: 1.4/10



GRAPHICS

I'm sure nothing could be worse than that gameplay, the graphics might help that game a lit....... Um, nevermind. The graphics on Nagano 98 are just as bad as the gameplay is. Your competitor has barely any detail at all. There is also a terrible frame rate, and you can barely see your oposition, only hope that you can somehow go faster than he is going without knowing just how fast he is going. The ice and snow look extremely terrible, and look more like pieces of paper instead of fluffy snow. I was very disapointed in this area. Overall, the graphics on Nagano Winter Olympics 98 are complete crap. Maybe blindfold yourself when playing this game and save yourself some torture.

GRAPHICS SCORE: 1.9/10



MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS

Compared to the gameplay and graphics, the sound in Nagano 98 is great. Unfortunately, being better than the graphics and gameplay in Nagano 98 is like breathing. It's involuntary. There is very little music, and what music there is is not pleasant to the ears. There's a little synthesised music before and after races, and that's about it. The music is terrible and not very well performed.

The sound effects are slightly better. A lady says things like ''Who will be number 1 in the world,'' before the races and things like, ''You've won the gold medal'' afterward. There is no other voices in the game. During the races you hear a rather accurate sound of sleds and skis sliding across smooth snow, and I will admit that this is decent sound. It's probably the only good area of the game, the sound of the snow. And when that's the only good area of the game, you've got a serious problem. Overall, the sound in Nagano 98 was poor, but it was better than the rest of the game.

MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS SCORE: 4.4/10



DIFFICULTY: HARD

Nagano 98 is one of those games that is challenging for the wrong reasons. The reason this game is challenging isn't the AI. Nosirree. It's more the togetherible control in the game that makes it nearly impossible to play fluently. The controls are downright terrible, and as I mentioned in gameplay, are not very well executed. The jumps are just atrocious, and it seems that the computer is going twice as fast as you. There are like two events that can be controlled easily, and these two are the two worst events in the game. <sigh> Some programmers think I'll love this game because it says ''olympics'' on it. Yeah right.



REPLAY VALUE: Low

I really can't think of any reason to keep playing a game as bad as Nagano 98. Crap gameplay, crap graphics, and poor sound equals a terrible game that shouldn't be replayed. There is also no reason to come back to the game, as there are no modes that are intended to keep you intrigued, and no modes keep you intrigued without intended to. In the end, this game has a replay value of about ten minutes.



OTHER GAME INFORMATION

RENT/buy?: DON'T RENT FOR $.05

Number OF PLAYERS: 2 I THINK (I didn't play this crap long enough to find out.)

GENRE: SPORTS



OVERALL SCORE: 1.8/10

Nagano Winter Olympics 98 is an extremely terrible game. There is no fun involved in playing it at all. All I can say now is avoid at all costs. As I said, if a friend offers you this game for a week for a nickel he's probably wanting to get rid of it. Don't let him put this trash in your Playstation, as Nagano Winter Olympics is so bad I'd pay the friend just to find someone else.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 08/03/00, Updated 08/03/00