Game 453: Winter Games

I had hoped to do this one in the winter, but organizing sessions for a multiplayer game isn't always easy. But here we are, in early August, and "B" and "D" return to the games, now hosted in Calgary.

There are only seven events this time, and two of them are basically the same thing. As before, we practiced all of them, and decided that five were worth doing in competition.

I play Ahab, from native Canada. "B" plays Otty, from the fantastic land of Epyx, and "D" goes as D, from the USA.

 

Hot dog aerials

I got my first and only 10 recording this gif.

Do stunts off a ski jump before the judges and make sure you land safely. It's basically the same game as Summer Games' platform dive except even simpler. Tricks are performed by holding a direction on the joystick and releasing to complete the trick - six directions correspond to six tricks including front flips and backflips. If your timing is very good you can transition to a second trick before you land, which guarantees you a good score if you can land it. But any imprecision and you will faceplant.

This was "D"'s favorite event in the game, and she actually got the best score of all of us during practice. But my double-backflip won the competition by a tenth of a point.

 

Biathlon 

IMO, this is the nicest-looking event.

Cross-country skiing alternating with rifle shooting. Alternate presses of left and right to stride forward - it's rhythm, not speed that counts - but watch your pulse, because the shooting portions become more difficult when it's elevated.

This was "B"'s favorite, though he missed enough shots to be relegated to second place. Overall, a pretty good event, but by far the longest one. It takes roughly three minutes to complete the course, and most of the other events are over in seconds!

 

Speed skating 

Another joystick-waggle event, like so many others. Rhythm and speed are both important here.

The skating does feel pretty good, and the SID-powered sound of your blades cutting through the ice is satisfying. This was overall a well-liked event, and "B" took the gold here.

 

Ski Jump 

An ominous overture warns you that this is Winter Games' most hardcore event.

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to land safely. In theory, it should be simple enough; you use the joystick's four directions to correct your stance before landing. But I never seemed to be able to find the safe landing stance, or else my skis would just get crossed at the last second.

Despite this, I nearly won the gold on distance alone, which counts for a lot more than style, but then "B" snatched it on his final attempt with a 60m launch that landed awkwardly but safely.

As a side-note, for the final four events, you have to flip the disk before and after each event, for some reason! You need to be on side 2 to play the event, but you need to be on side 1 to see your scores. It's small, but it's annoying.

 

Bobsled

B: They should have you shoot guns from the sled. Call it an Alaskan drive-by.
A: We'll call it Cool Gunnings.
D: I want to divorce both of you.

Winter Games' final challenge is... kind of underwhelming? It's a race, but all you can do is lean into the turns to avoid crashing, which is not that hard once you learn to anticipate them. There's no pushing, and there's no controlling your speed, which seems like an important part of a racing simulation. I'm not even really sure what determines your speed, but we all came in within a fraction of a second of each other.

After the final event, we see the final standings and are dumped back to the main menu. No closing ceremonies this time!

 

Figure Skating

 

One event pretending to be two events. This one wasn't good enough for competition.

Essentially a long-form version of the hot dog aerials. Seven tricks are performed by pushing the joystick in a corresponding direction with the button pressed, and landed by centering the stick and pressing the button at the correct time.

You have one minute to perform a routine that incorporates all seven tricks, and points are lost for awkward executions and falls. A second, mode, "Free Skating," gives you two minutes and a more complicated scoring system that has no strict requirements about which tricks must be performed or how often but rewards variety.

I couldn't manage to get a decent score in this mode. "B" and "D" could barely even do the moves.

GAB rating: Average. I think we all liked this better than Summer Games II overall, and the events were pretty consistently okay. None of them are great, and personally I didn't think any were as good as kayaking or the javelin throw, but none of them were bad either.