One game, one dream? Not quite. We’ve actually tinkered with the slogan from ‘one world, one dream’, the cheeky rascals that we are, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to propagate that message considering the controversy plaguing this year’s Olympic Games regarding the Chinese and their involvement in Tibet. Nevertheless, we apologise for the most depressing intro to a review ever written, but hey, at least the videogame promises to be a bit of fun.

If you imagined the sort of thing you’d do playing Beijing 2008, nine times out of ten you’d be bang on the money. Most events consist of waggling the sticks to run and tapping buttons to perform other tasks. In essence it’s a collection of mini-games, a bit like all those Wii games you hate to love, and as such it is more of a party game best enjoyed with others.

For the most part events are pretty enjoyable, but the biggest letdown for us is the track events. This is purely because of a shoddy starting procedure when launching from the grid. It’s incredibly difficult to time because there’s no prompt whatsoever to aid in getting it right. It makes a huge difference to the race too and spoils the fun because you’re forced to play catch-up every time you balls it up.

Luckily at least half of the other events make up for this shortcoming. Take the Floor Gymnastics for instance. We never knew timing presses of prompted buttons was so compellingly addictive. Then there’s the Diving event. Here you rotate both sticks in conjunction with two spinning dots. It’s sexist if you ask us as everyone knows men can only concentrate on one thing at once! We were also quite impressed with the Table Tennis, and as for the Cycling, that beast left us positively knackered.

The problem is, once you’ve played each event a few times they become drained of any further interest. It’s great for a quick laugh, but there’s a serious lack of charm that fails to motivate in coming back for more. It does have online play, but it’s a short-lived incentive because it’s not nearly as exciting as beating an opponent in the same room. Worst of all though are some pretty terrible loading times. They kill the momentum and any enjoyment dead in the water, and ultimately that’s the final hurdle in keeping Beijing 2008 sealed tight in its box.

Javid Sangra