Home / Review: Winter Sports The Ultimate Challenge

Well we just got another game for reviewing purposes and it is an interesting game. The game focuses on winter sports such as Speed Skating, Skiing, Bobsledding and the like. I have put a nice amount of time into the game and I feel I have a grasp of what the game is about.

This game has been a top seller on Amazon for a couple weeks and I can see why as this game is actually very fun and even at points challenging. Every sport in this game has full Wii remote functionality except maybe figure skating but more on that later. The Wii remote functionality mostly consists of shakes, twists, turns, back and forth motions and even crank motions to do a certain functions at the start or during each of the sports.

For example in the Bobsled, Luge, and Skeleton sections of the game feature a doted dual purple lined track you have to follow to go faster down the tube. These portions of the game are controlled with the Wii remote similar to many racing games on the market (horizontal axis) with the ability to lean left or right. In addition, a nice touch is if the bobsled or other vehicle gets near the wall an echo type icon appears to explain the vehicle is getting too close to the wall and if the vehicle hits the wall this echo icon turns red with a thud.

There are several modes to choose from in this game. Many of them are competition structured with varying lengths. The main competitions are 15 or 7 where the player has to run the gauntlet of many different events in succession to the end where your medals are tallied and finalized. There is also a virtual and classic competition. The virtual competition consists of the player creating their own competition paths with varying events and the classic competition where selected venues from previous RTL Winter Games 2007 is unlocked from the campaign mode for the player to enjoy.

Outside of these competition modes are the campaign, career, and what I consider to be like Electronic Arts quick play or single events. The campaign mode is a feature where the player has to go through many events doing certain feats or special achievements and the better the player is will open up more events and tracks that are locked with padlocks. As for the career mode and the single events, these are self-explanatory.

Now I bet most people are wondering what type events are there in this game. Aside from Bobsled, Luge, and Skeleton that are pretty much track events there are skiing, skating, and curling events. Skiing is broken down in to ski jump, cross-country skiing, and variations of alpine skiing such as Downhill, Super G, and Slaloms. Skating is pretty much speed skating and figure skating. I found figure skating to be actually fun, as it is musical based in a way. You shake the Wii Remote or Nunchuck when the controller icon flashes in focused circle to make the skater do various moves no doubt the easiest of the rest of the sports unless you crank up the difficulty.

Curling is its own strange sport where you chuck a stone down a lane trying to make it stop inside a large circle. To slowdown or stop the stone the player controls two characters using brooms of sorts to gain points all while knocking out your opponent’s or protecting your teams own stones. Curling has three modes: Game, Tournament, and Simulation. Game is pretty much playing against the computer while Tournament is playing against one or more friends. Simulation is a mode where you throw several stones down the lane to the center of the circle and the team with the closer stones wins points, to win rounds, which after 10 rounds the team with the most points wins overall.

Now that the sports are pretty much explained, how does the game stack up in the graphical and audio department. I can pretty much say that the game is not meant for graphics whores or audiophiles but the graphics and the audio get the job done. The visuals I would say is a mixture of cheap GameCube and simple PC games such as like Roller Coaster Tycoon, maybe a little bit better. Jumping to the audio side, the commentary tracks of the two commentators are funny though somewhat repetitive and sometimes infuriating if you are doing badly in the sport as the commentators pretty much trash the player. The commentary is hard to hear though over the music which I think was just a mixing mistake not really a big deal just lower the music volume. However, speaking of music, the music is good, keeps the player into the sport at least from my point of view, and is a mixture of light sporty rock.

Now in closing I can somewhat see how this game is selling pretty well on Amazon for a budget title. I found the game play quite enticing so maybe that is the reason people are picking it up. I say the game is a nice rental or budget title or one of those titles for those that do not have a lot of time to play games. Just pop the game in and do a single event for a quick gaming fix.

In finality, I rate this game about a B in the normal schoolhouse grading scale. More images can be found at the game’s gallery here.