Winter Sports Games

With curling cancelled, I was looking for a curling fix. Unfortunately, this package didn't have what I was looking for. Pros: The ice surface appeared pebbled and that's a nice attention to detail. It looks like the developer cares about making a fun product, and they deserve credit for their efforts. The control scheme is easy to learn and I can't complain too much about the controls in general. Credit for a clever 2-sweeper control scheme. Cons: The stones are thrown straight by default, which should be an impossible thing to do. Stone physics on collision are incredibly unrealistic in multiple ways. 4-stone ends leave little room for any strategy. Game length should probably be customizable. Hitting the wall did not remove stones from play. I never tried hogging a rock, so I don't know what would happen. A good effort, but this skews more 'arcade' than simulation. Someone playing curling for the first time might enjoy it, though they'd probably have to look up the rules outside of the game. I hope the developers will continue to improve product, because potential is there.

I was expecting something like the N64 game "Nagano Winter Olympics 98", in other words: I wasn't expecting much, but at least something fun. This is not fun. This game is an absolute waste of money and time. For those who don't know yet, you have to buy it physically to get a Steam key. My strong advice is: don't. For the love of whatever you believe in, don't! As another reviewer mentioned, this takes away the opportunity to get a refund, and trust me, you'll want that. This game features modes strongly resembling Nagano: Slalom, Downhill, Ski Jumping, Bob (2 people), Luge and Curling. We (4 players in a couch MP setting) started with Slalom and that's where the horror began. The controls are simple, which is good for very casual players, but the feedback is horrible. For instance, you can ski downhill at like 180 km/h literally sideways. The funniest thing, however, is the lack of balancing. In slalom, you have to ski between the markers. If you fail to do that, you get a 3s penalty on your time - which is genius! It takes you longer than 3s to actually navigate properly, so simply going down in a straight line, collecting penalty after penalty, gives you better overall times than actually doing slalom, because you'll go very fast. You can, in fact, fail, if you ride straight into a wall. Worry not, you get a second try, there is nearly no challenge here. Ski Jumping was OK at best. It's about timing button presses and controlling against the wind, but in a very simplified fashion (way easier than Nagano). Before your jump, you get to press a button timed when you feel the wind is right for you. Since the wind is constantly turning around in all directions (and at storm magnitudes, if you actually interpret those numbers), you can easily pick the best wind for every jump by waiting for a few seconds. Again, no real challenge. Downhill was pretty much going down in a straight line. Much like slalom if you don't give a sh** and just go down to collect the best times despite penalties, just this time there's no penalties. Minimal steering is needed, no challenge whatsoever. Bob was an absolute abomination. We failed numerous times to even get through, but as a matter of fact there is no telling why. The controls are horrendous: at highway speeds you can instantly alter your direction. You can also literally do a barrel roll (there you go, Peppy Hare) in mid-air, and at that point you'd imagine you're disqualified because your crew just died, but really it doesn't give you any disadvantages. We couldn't really figure out why exactly we were disqualified most of the time, it just happened at some random point. Thing is, we picked hardest difficulty - the only meaning of that is that the ride becomes longer. A bob ride can then easily take 2 minutes. More often than not, we were disqualified shortly before the end. But you get a second try! So picture this: 4 players, ~2 minutes per ride, two attempts per player - that's 16 minutes, 12 of which 3 players are watching something that's not even remotely entertaining. On the verge of falling asleep, we tried Luge. It's exactly like Bob, except a lot easier. That's all there's to say really. Finally, Curling. I'm tired of writing here, it's just as bad as the rest, and it doesn't seem to make a difference if you decide to use the brooms or not. It's also 3 rounds of 5 throws, i.e. 15 throws in total, for one match of which there are 3 (two semifinals, one final). We stopped after about 3 minutes in because we realized this would cost us an hour or so of our lives that we never get back, just like the money I spent on this game. I closed the game and uninstalled it. The visuals are nice for a family-type game, although you never really see any crowd despite clearly hearing a lot of people. In that regard, sound was another issue. During bob and luge, you'd hear a very loud and constant scratching noise. It's probably supposed to be the sound of the ice, but it adds nothing to the experience and just hurts the ear after a while. There is precisely one piece of music in the game that's about a minute long and as generic as possible. It just loops all of the time with no break or variation. I promised my friends to write a review on this, that's the only reason I recapped my horrible experiences from last evening. I beg you, don't give the developers of this any money. Then again, it would be a funny thing to do because the devs used Unity Free to publish this game - if they make enough revenue, they'll probably get into legal trouble. I truly believe this is the very reason they make it so hard to get this game in the first place.