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WCW Mayhem wasn't bad you know.
Splinter Cell is a bag of wank but possibly the worst I've played was Beijing Olympics 2008. Here are my thoughts from five years ago!
(SPOILER)My brother, as he is prone to do, got carried away by the Olympics and bought this game. So I've played it for a bit, and set out for an epic Olympic adventure, pitting the might of the British Empire against the world. By the world I apparently mean Italy, Greece, Spain, Bahrain, South Africa and a couple of other major sporting nations.
This game requires you to "waggle" the control stick in order to run. Running is an important thing, obviously, and not just for running events. You need to run in things like the long jump, throwing a javelin and whatnot. Naturally, with it being such an important thing, they made it extremely easy to use, right? No. No, in fact China hates the West so much they decided to make it a digital kick to the crotch, and then they banged your granny for good measure. Here is a list of the things that do not constitute waggling:
- Moving the stick from side to side.
- Moving the stick up and down.
- Moving the stick in a clockwise circle.
- Moving the stick in an anti-clockwise circle.
- Moving the stick randomly around.
- Screaming "What the smurf do you want from me you smurfing 


game?"
- Curling up into a ball in the corner and gently sobbing.
The closest I've come to success is to put it on my crotch and then act like I'm having a smurfing spasticated wank with it. Yes. Thank you for that, Sega.
This results in all these AI competitors shooting past me and me waddling like a turtle with diarrhoea. Hurdling adds a lot more fun to the mix. Not only do you have to "waggle" (smurf that word. seriously. It used to be one of my favourites) but you also have to jump when a hurdle comes up. It sounds simple, but my hurdler decided he was too good for jumping, and instead bravely smashed through every single one. When you approach the line you can press RT to do a dip to lower your time, or LT to showboat, Usain Bolt style. So naturally I reached the finish line a good ten seconds after the Italians had claimed gold, my hurdler proudly waved to the crowd, knowing he had served Queen and country. Good job, son. Good job. Go Team GB!
And then, he came. Who is he? A ginger man. A beautiful ginger man. But somehow I won gold in the High Jump and silver in the Long Jump with this man. I don't know how he did it. But he did. And I will forever love him. Me and ginger Dave (he looked like a Dave) shared a moment as he stood proudly on the podium and God Save the Queen played out across the Bird's Nest stadium. It's a nice touch that they have every single nation in the game's anthem on there. I also have to love the attention to detail with the long jump and the throwing events. Men in jackets raise little flags and measure everything. That's wonderful. I think more games need these guys. Although they kept taking their jackets on and putting them back on again between throws. I don't know what was up with that.
Swimming. Oh smurf swimming. No, seriously. I smurfing won that trout. I pumped my fists in the air in victory as I crossed the line first... until apparently I didn't. The results screen came up and apparently I came in 4th with the Chinese claiming victory... HMM, THE HOST NATION, HOW UNSUSPICIOUS. You just know it's a conspiracy by the evil communist Chinese. They've never forgiven us for holding onto Hong Kong for so long. Hilariously, in the other swimming event, I sort of came last. I say "sort of", because I did come last...but the game decides I had actually come in third and handed me a bronze. I have to ask just who it was that let this past quality control? Who just does not give enough of a smurf to allow that through? It seems like it's just one of the easiest things to program. Have the guy who comes in first win the race. And then there was the diving. Which I was none too shabby at, actually! I took gold...just. You see, one of the judges, one of the horrible, ganja smoking, floppy hat wearing, rastafarian judges, whose nation will not be revealed, decided every single dive I did was trout. The other judges were having a merry old wank to my efforts, but not Cool Runnings over here. Oh no. Yeah? Well I've heard farts that sounded better than some of Bob Marley's songs.
Another sport I like is gymnastics. Mostly because it's "press button when we say so!" stuff which is easy to win at, but also because of the brilliant, brilliant attention to detail. As we all know, all gymnastic coaches are paedophiles. Watching little girls contort their bodies in skin-tight outfits? Come on buddy, who do you think you are you fooling? This game has captured that. After your gymnast performs, there is a cutscene of her (or him) sitting down next to an old man in a tracksuit. The old man stares intently at the gymnast for a good 10-15 seconds, while the gymnast awkwardly tries to avoid his steely gaze. Credit where credit is due: Nicely smurfing done, Sega.
Other sports include Cycling, which is also heartily broken as I managed to lap the German team but apparently they had a quicker time than me, Shooting, where keeping a steady aim is apparently a bad thing and instead your gun has to be moving when you shoot if you want to hit anything, Archery, which I excelled at, but the computer AI is smurfing Legolas and Robin Hood all rolled into one and refuses to smurfing choke, Kayaking...which caused me a lot of emotional trauma and I just don't feel like I am ready to talk about it yet, Judo, where you have to put in combinations to throw people, which sounds simple enough, only these combinations are not listed anywhere so you're just destined to get smurfed and smurfed hard, and Table Tennis, which isn't so bad I suppose, but it drags on a bit. I mean, it has variety, yeah, I'll give it that. But the controls are so smurfing broken for certain events that I can easily dominate and get gold with a clear margin on some events first time, but on others I'll perform so badly I would lose at a school sports day. It's just too inconsistent. Plus little errors like not acknowledging who actually won ...well no, that is a major error right there...irk. Not worth buying. Probably not worth renting. I don't think my brother is going to touch it again. I don't think I will either.
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