Review: Beijing 2008

No control in the Olympics

Beijing 2008 is an surprisingly good game graphic-wise, but otherwise it fails big, at least on PC. If you can play this game with a controller: DO IT! The keyboard doesn’t do it for this game.

Against all odds: You will have the bookmakers against you in this game.

Gold: Deutchland, Deutchland, über alles....

Let’s take the positive things first. You will have several of the Olympic events to play with and this is very fun if you play with friends. You could always play alone, but the career mod is too difficult and also gets boring after one season or less. The graphics is also pretty amazing for an 2008 game, when we are in the year of 2012. The sound: Not so much! This is SEGA again, on it’s worst. Japanese arcade gaming sounds again. Takes away the whole spirit of the Olympics, so for god’s sake turn the volume down and put on some music instead.

Now we're talkin': 25 meters Rapid pistol. Maybe the game's best event, it's actually a lot of fun.

British bulldog: Didn't help you this time mate?

If you manage to play this game with a keyboard, and i bet you won’t, there is quite some fun to be part of. Some of the events work great. 25 meters rapid shooting, 1500 meters marathon and some of the gymnastic events. If you take the 100 to 400 meters running, hurdles, discuss throwing, swimming, judo, weightlifting and pretty much the rest of the events, then this game is made for the analog stick. There is no such way to press a keyboard so quick as they think you will and you will end up making a fool out of yourself when finishing 30 seconds behind the winner in 100 meters etc. The game can be fun as a party game, if everybody is drunk and don’t understand what’s happening anyways.   

Tricky: Javeling throw. Tricky with crazy keyboard setup.

Gymnastics: One of the events that i actually do better in the game than in real life.

Gamescore

Beijing 2008 (2008)

Graphics:  Good good. The graphics in this game is really stunning, four years after. SEGA knows their ways around good looks. 8/10

Audio: Oh,no. Here we go again. One thing they don’t know how to do properly, is the sound. There is even a commentary that has two lines during the whole event you’re playing. If he didn’t say anything before the finish line, i wouldn’t know that he was there. And then there’s the music. It really takes away the Olympics feeling. Turn it off! 2/10

Gameplay: It’s a shame that some of the events works so perfect and others are a complete disaster. The positive is that they who work, can be quite fun for some time. 4/10

Controls: Complete chaos to play this on a keyboard. Have tried it on Xbox and it’s much better there. But as this is a PC review it will score low. Every button you have to press is shown in xbox mode, so it makes things even more difficult as if it wasn’t that from the start. 2/10

Overall Score:  It starts as a great game when you see the opening of the events. Everything looks stunning andsometimes you get the good feelings. Soon there is the poor audio and when you try to press the buttons at the right time, it just won’t work. I really want to like this game, but there are just too many problems. Stay clear of it, that’s my advice. 3/10