Having a competitive winter sport that isn’t connected to the Winter Olympics sounds weird. Weirdly, neither Mario nor Sonic are with us.
However, Winter Games 2023 defies several trends by immersing players in the world of winter sports at a time when those sports are largely forgotten by the general public.
The problem is that, regardless of the Winter Games’ Olympic designation or amount of enthusiasm, 2023’s performance will rank right up there with Eddie the Eagle or the Jamaican bobsled squad in terms of quality.
However, it fulfils expectations because Wild River Games let you start your Winter Games 2023 career either by yourself or with nearby pals. We don’t believe it has omitted too many of the traditional winter sports, and it also covers the essentials of those activities. This implies that we will have the opportunity to compete in a variety of sports, including bobsleigh, skeleton, ski jumping, ski cross, snowboard cross, super-g, downhill, biathlon, short track, curling, and downhill.
Even while many control systems are copied for many events, such as Bobsleigh and Skeleton, and Downhill and Super-G are essentially the same events, the events themselves are quite well defined, and the first few tries at medal-grabbing are amusing enough.
But Winter Games 2023 rapidly turns into a monotonous, very repetitious, and boring event. It’s as far away from winning a medal as you can get.
There are numerous explanations behind that. First off, the aesthetics are horrible, save for a few nicely executed cut scenes that play out before any incident.
It appears that Wild River took Torino 2006, the official Winter Olympics video game from years past, as inspiration. Torino 2006 had blocky characters, subpar face rendering, and a general dullness that at best smacked of last-gen. The venues you’ll participate in are equally unappealing: they’re covered in snow, snow, and more snow, with any structures, again missing in texture and complexity.
The audio quality is also quite bad. Every event features repeated commentary and event announcements; after hearing it’s a fine day and “all contestants are in their best shape” once, you’ve heard it a million times.
Although in-event sounds are merely adequate, they are severely constrained by their very nature.
The events themselves are essentially the only thing that can redeem things if you’re not convinced by the graphics. Additionally, it’s not good news in that regard.
Except for curling, which is moderately well-designed and features some tactical play, the remainder of Winter Games 2023 requires you to frequently press the A button, hold the RT to maintain the built-up speed, and then tease the thumbstick for directional control.
While there are some minor variations—mostly in Biathlon where you occasionally alternatively press two buttons before slowing down on the shot range—the Winter Games of 2023 remain, for the most part, a rather monotonous experience.
Sincerely, we anticipated that. We’ve played winter, summer, and Olympic sports games for decades, and we still have incredibly fond recollections of things like Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and track & field. But unlike those games, which were full of passion, personality, and soul, Winter Games 2023 is a tedious rival; one that doesn’t give you many reasons to want to beat your previous records or anything else.
That is not to imply that those options don’t exist. You can play through the individual disciplines in Winter Games 2023 at your own pace. The game offers a variety of cups for you to work through, all of which come in three different levels of difficulty: easy (far too easy), medium (still fairly easy), and hard (the only time you’ll need to put your button-mashing skills to the test). You can even alter events as you see appropriate with the use of a custom cup. Almost everything may be enjoyed alone or with up to three nearby friends if you want to add this to your playlist for a party. However, we predict that it won’t remain there for very long.
Winter Games 2023 is ultimately a game that you’ll find yourself playing for little more than an hour before the monotony and shoddy presentation become truly tiresome. That’s more due to a lack of genuine enjoyment or fun than the absence of any Olympic tag holding back the Winter Games 2023.
