» Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games: Review, The plumber and hog are back!

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games

If you ever played the first Mario & Sonic crossover game for DS, you know it was primarily just a collection of minigames -- some fun, others wretchedly boring -- and, as cool as it was to have the chubby plumber and spiky hog together in a game, the whole premise of the game wore thin pretty quickly. Choose from of 16 characters from the two franchises, get the Gold Medal in all 24 events, then rinse and repeat. There was NO storyline (the gaming world's biggest rivals finally meet each other, and there's no backstory behind such an historic occasion?), no reward from your hard work (besides a little emblem with the logo of whichever character you conquered the game with), and once you were done, you had no reason to continue playing, because you had already played the life out of every event.

Thus, when word of a sequel was released, your first thought was likely the same as mine: "Eh, I'll buy it, but it looks like it's just a copy of the first game, but with 'Winter' added to the title". Thankfully, you (...and I ) couldn't have been more wrong. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games does retain the same "Play through all the events to get the gold medal and be rewarded with a crappy emblem" idea, but that whole aspect takes the backseat to the newly-added Adventure Tour mode -- a vaguely RPG-esque adventure that actually has... drumroll, please... a STORYLINE!

Eggman and Bowser have teamed up and kidnapped the six "Snow Spirits" in charge of making it snow around the world, so they can stage their own Olympic Winter Games with their own rules. The details are hazy as to why exactly why two evil geniuses are concerned with being in charge of the Olympics, but that's beside the point. Anyway, upon discovering that all the snow on earth has disappeared, Mario & Sonic (who apparently hang out with each other a lot nowadays) begin their oddysey to save the Snow Spirits and restore the Olympic games to where they belong: Canada! Okay, so the storyline is pretty cheesy, and it gets even worse as you play through the game, but it's a storyline nonetheless.

At left, Mario, Sonic, and Toad meet a Snow Spirit in the Adventure Tour.
At right, Metal Sonic is failing miserably at Dream Snowboarding.
(Credit goes to IGN for screenshot)

Silly storyline aside, the Adventure Tour is immensely cool and fun. As soon as the intro cutscene ends and the gameplay begins, you are given control of either Mario or Sonic (you can switch between the two heroes any time with a simple tap of the X button), and get to explore a large, somewhat freeroaming-style city. The controls couldn't be simpler. You can hold the stylus on the touch screen to move your character fluidly in whatever direction you please, and tap objects or NPCs to examine/talk to them. Alternately, you can go with the more traditional method by using the D-pad to move and the A button to examine/talk. Throughout your adventure, you'll get to take part in some very interesting (albeit badly-written and rather dorky) conversations between the Nintendo and Sega characters. Yes, for the first time EVER, you'll get to see Shadow chatting with Mario about the ongoing battle against Dr. Eggman, or be fascinated by watching Sonic have a heart-to-heart conversation with Peach about the evils of Global Warming. Okay, so that last part isn't true, but you gotta admit, any fanboy's dream is to see the gaming world's biggest rivals actually talking to each other.

Chatting with Tails in the Adventure Tour mode
(Credit goes to IGN for screenshot)

Scattered throughout the town are numerous "Mission Boards". Read a Mission Board to play a unique mission (for instance: "Charge up energy and do 3 speed boosts in Downhill Skiing"), then beat it to earn a Crystal. Collect 4 Crystals, and you will be able to eliminate ice walls, allowing you further access into the city. As you get further, you'll eventually encounter Bosses, who race you through certain Events. Basically, the Adventure Tour is a very clever way to make all 27 Events more worthwhile and enjoyable.

As fun as it is to play as your favorite mascot in this Adventure Tour overworlds, you'll eventually be forced to switch between heroes (at least temporarily) in order to progress. For instance, Sonic can jump on springs or spindash through fragile walls of ice, while Mario can navigate through the local plumbing (i.e. green pipes) or use Mini Mushrooms to slide into small areas.

Exploring the Adventure Tour overworld with the fastest thing alive
(Credit goes to IGN for screenshot)

As you take down bosses and free the Snow Spirits, you gain access to other towns, and more characters will join you on your adventure. Once you have a new teammate in your party, you can use their unique abilities to access areas you couldn't before, through fun (but short) minigames. My personal favorite minigame is the one where you are placed in control of Blaze, and you have to blow into the microphone so she will use her fire powers to melt giant blocks of ice in her path. Unfortunately, only Mario and Sonic are playable in the overworlds; the other 18 characters can only be used in their respective minigames.

Speaking of the characters, 4 new faces have been added to the roster this time around, putting the number of playable characters up to a very satisfying 20. Here's a full list:
--Mario
--Luigi
--Yoshi
--Peach
--Daisy
--Wario
--Waluigi
--Donkey Kong (new)
--Bowser
--Bowser Jr. (new)
--Sonic
--Tails
--Knuckles
--Shadow
--Amy
--Metal Sonic (new)
--Blaze
--Silver (new)
--Vector
--Eggman

But the familiar faces don't end there. Lots of other characters from the Sega and Nintendo franchises pop up all over the place in the Adventure Tour. Some of them are simple NPCs, while others are Bosses. You can find a full list of these extra characters below (simply highlight the list to see the names), but beware of massive spoilers, because most of these characters are completely unexpected, and I don't want to ruin anything for you!
--SPOILERS BEGIN HERE--
--(Names are not listed in any particular order)--
King Boo (Boss)
Big Bullet Bill (Boss)
Dry Bones Koopa (Boss)
Dry Bowser (a Boss... who is apparently an entirely seperate being than Bowser?)
Rouge the Bat (starts out as a helpful NPC, and later becomes a Boss as well)
Eggman Nega (Boss)
E-123 Omega (Boss)
Jet the Hawk (Boss)
Espio the Chameleon (NPC)
Charmy Bee (NPC)
Neutral, Hero, Dark, and Sonic Chao (NPCs)
Omochao (NPCs that give helpful info)
Big the Cat (NPC)
Toads (NPCs)
Shy Guys (NPCs)
Birdo (NPC)
--SPOILERS END HERE--
Sadly, none of the Bosses mentioned above become playable after their defeat, which is a major downer. However, we can all hope that someday, a few handy Action Replay codes will be able to remedy that!

Bet you're getting more and more excited about this game, eh? Well, I haven't even begun to talk about the REST of the game! Other than the Adventure Tour, there are four more modes: Single Match, Multi-Round Match, Party Games, and Ghost.
Single Match is basically the essence of what the original Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games was all about: play 27 events, in any order, at your own leisure and try to get the Gold Medal in each of them. However, unlike the first game, there are now 3 difficulty levels for each event, just to add a bit more to the challenge. In my opinion, the Events in this game are vastly superior to those of the previous game, because this time, you'll actually feel like you're controlling your character. For instance, the first game's Events consisted primarily of rubbing your stylus around the screen in predetermined patterns to make the onscreen character hop on a trampoline or do a pole vault. This time around, however, you can often control your chosen Nintendo/Sega hero via the D-Pad, L, R, and B buttons, like in the "real" Sonic and Mario games. It makes the game a much more enjoyable experience. Another thing worth noting is that all the events are quite fast-paced; excellent examples of this are "Blazing Bobsleigh", the Sonic-Rush-inspired "Supersonic Downhill", or "Intense Short Track".

Luigi doing some Dream Downhill Skiing
(Credit goes to IGN for screenshot)

Breaking through the sound barrier in the Blazing Bobleigh
(Credit goes to IGN for screenshot)

In Multi-Round Match, you can choose to play through 3-5 Events in a row, and try to win the majority of them. There is no real reward for doing so, though -- this mode is mainly just to test your skills.
The Party Games mode is another fun addition, that seems to be slightly based on Mario Party -- four players (1 human, 3 CPU) play a round of Bingo, Lucky Spin, or Wild Card to randomly choose an Event to play. Once the Event is over, rinse and repeat a few times until the game is over, and whoever beat the most Events wins. It's not a thrilling mode, but it's a nice addition.
Finally, Ghost allows you to play against your own personal ghost, or the ones created by the game's designers, in an attempt to really show your stuff. Believe me, the Staff Ghosts are brutal to go up against, but a lot of fun to challenge.

Phew. I still have a lot more to say about this game, but my review has already dragged on for far too long, so I'll just finish this off with a list of other things worth mentioning:

Good stuff:
+The character models and animations are absolutely top-notch. They're even more detailed than those of Super Mario 64 DS and Sonic Rush Adventure combined.
+The overworld towns in Adventure Tour are MASSIVE, and take quite a while to fully explore. Altogether, the Adventure Tour took me three or four days to complete.
+Did I mention that Endless Possibility (theme of Sonic Unleashed), Knight of the Wind (theme of Sonic & The Black Knight) and the Sonic Heroes theme play in the background during the Ultimate Figure Skating Event?!
+Lots of stuff from the Sonic & Mario universes in each event, such as rings, coins, Chaos Emeralds, Stars, koopa shells, etc.
+Some of the Sega character art has been borrowed from Sonic Heroes. A lot of you probably don't care, but I thought that was kinda cool.
+In the Adventure Tour overworld, Mario runs as fast as Sonic. Finally, he's decided to pick up the pace a little!
+There's plenty of replay value! Those of you who are utter completionists will have to keep playing until you've won all 81 Gold Medals in Single Match (1 medal for each difficulty level), all 110 gold medals in Adventure Tour, and all 76 Emblems (which are obtained by completed miscellaneous objectives, such as completing 10 missions with a character), not to mention the dozens of pieces of Olympic Memorabilia and Trivia that can be collected throughout the game.
+The music is very nice indeed, especially in some Adventure Tour towns. It sounds like a perfect mix of the tunes from both franchises.

Bad stuff:
-Dialogue is cheesy. Actually, babyish is a better word for it. All the characters act like they're about 7 years old, and their names are repeated a lot, as if you'll forget Bowser's name if he doesn't repeat it 47 times. Here's a not-so-exaggerated example:

-Shadow has been turned into a complete and utter pansy. He has the same dorky, "I want to be buddies with everybody" personality as chumps like Tails or Peach.
-Neither Mario nor Sonic has any written dialogue in the Adventure Tour. Toad does all the talking for them. Okay, I understand that Mario rarely speaks, but why did Sega have to screw up Sonic too? That ain't fair, especially since EVERY other character CAN talk in this game. Wario, Waluigi, Yoshi, and even Donkey Kong can speak in complete sentences! Where is the justice?!
-Metal Sonic's 3D model sometimes has green eyes, rather than red. Dunno what the deal is with that.
-Somehow, Sega managed to misspell the plural form of the word "Chao" as "Chaos" on numerous occasions. How did they screw that one up?
-There is no Seaside Hill or Radical Highway in the DS version of the game. However, one of the towns in Adventure Tour vaguely resembles the inside of the Death Egg from Sonic 2, and the "Blazing Bobsleigh" Dream Event appears to take place in Station Square.

I think I've already said all that can possibly be said about this game, so I'll just leave it at that. Hopefully you managed to stay awake through my entire review!

My final score for this game is 10/10. I'd go higher, but that would just make me look like some raving psycho fanboy. Now, get out there and try Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter games for yourself!

This post has been edited by TechnoSuperguy on Oct 22 2009, 04:45 PM

Looks fun, I was going to buy it tomorrow, but some d---weed stole my math book which will cost $40 to replace.

Cool! I might get it. I got the Olympic Games for Wii, and I admit it got old quick. Hopefully, this one is different.