GamerTM writes: "With the Beijing Olympics being the big thing at the moment, the games industry has some well-timed titles for your delectation. Just like the slew of tennis games that appear around Wimbledon, Summer Athletics along with Beijing 2008 arrived panting at the game stores before the Olympic flame even reached its final resting place.
Although Summer Athletics doesn't carry the official stamp of the Olympics, this may actually be a good thing. There's no use of real athletes in Beijing 2008 anyway, so there's not that much difference in terms of mirroring the real events. For some, Beijing is such a hotbed of controversy that avoidance of anything officially related to the Games is absolute. There's no such restriction with Summer Athletics, which simply serves to allow you the opportunity to run, jump, swim and dive your way to a few generic gold medals without even the smallest hint of any Olympic rings to spoil your enjoyment."
VGGEN writes: "Ahh…the Summer Olympics. It's hard to believe that they only take place every four years, isn't it? Of course, given the quality and interest level (or lack thereof) of certain events falling under that overall categorization, perhaps it's better that the Summer Olympics only occur quadrennially. The same unwelcome recurrences are reflected likewise in Summer Athletics: The Ultimate Challenge. Conspiracy Entertainment apparently wasn't able to secure the legal right to establish itself as official Summer Olympics merchandising, but a rose by any other name is still a rose, as the Bard once wrote, and branding can only carry a game so far. What ultimately matters, despite decades of business and retail models pointing to the contrary, is the actual content of the game. And when measured by that standard, Summer Athletics: The Ultimate Challenge fails to even earn a spot on the podium."
On the eighth day of Christmas Electronic Theatre brings you the eighth instalment in our The Twelve Games of Christmas feature series. The Twelve Games of Christmas is a new feature series aimed to highlight the best disc-based releases of 2008, one month at a time. Today, we take a look at August 2008, and finally see that summer drought take shape...
PSX Extreme writes: "There's something inherently challenging in creating a game that must recreate multiple sports, especially when many of the competitions would require a completely different control mechanic. So when it comes to titles like Summer Athletics: The Ultimate Challenge, we sympathize with the developers because in our opinion, they weren't in an enviable position. However, instead of rising above, 49Games fails where so many other studios have failed: they just can't bring us an Olympics-type video game where the control is both accessible and sensible, and furthermore, the technical aspects of the production fall by the wayside. Beijing 2008 was terrible but this title is even worse due to overly complicated control, a severely lacking presentation and terrible graphics and sound. From swimming to pole vault to cycling, they get very little right and a whole lot wrong, so if you were entertaining the idea of a possible purchase, we're about to disabuse you of that notion right now. Sure, it may seem appealing for simple family-oriented athletic entertainment, but nobody is likely to enjoy themselves."
