Mario&Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Review (DS)

Sometimes you want a game that you can pick up and play for five minutes and sometimes you want a game you can sit down and play for an hour. This is one of those games and yep, SEGA has done it again. They’ve teamed up with Nintendo and brought Mario and Sonic together for yet another title. This time  the reason is the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Dr. Eggman and Bowser are upset they weren’t invited. Considering their histories, is it any surprise?

So sets the stage for a full-featured and robust arcade sports title on the DS with great controls and lots of options. NO, seriously. Mario & Sonic Olympic winter games (OWG from now on), is cool. The game offers up multiple modes including single player and multiplayer (2-4 people) both single card and multi-card play. The modes allow for single match, multi-round matches, party games and ghost mode (beat your best or that of your friends).

On top of all that there’s the Adventure tours mode which is a single player adventure game. You go through a storyline and play each sport in the hopes of beating the bad guys and bringing winter back so the games can take place. But really it is quite cool. Some of the mini-games are extremely simple but this is another of those games that’s aimed more at a younger generation of gamer. That’s not to say the everyone else won’t enjoy it, because it truly is an enjoyable game.

The events all require different combinations of buttons, touch screen stylus etc. It means that each event is unique in its control scheme and gives a nice flavor to the game. Additionally, the controls aren’t insanely difficult like some sports titles have had in the past. This is truly an arcade sports experience not to be missed.