Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games Review

Have you ever noticed how sometimes developers with large franchises don’t really have to try anymore? They’re built on the brilliance of their early efforts that earned all our trust, but are now happy to push out subpar products in the knowledge their previously well made name will guarantee sales. Then we cry in pain at the betrayal, but that doesn’t stop us from giving them more money the next time they inevitably do the same thing and come ringing at our nostalgia bells. Star Wars did it to me, The Simpsons are doing it to me and now Mario and Sonic have teamed up to slam me with a double dose of broken expectations. I know I shouldn’t be expecting too much from Sonic now days, the poor guy is practically the poster child for exactly what I’ve been describing but I was really hoping that Mario’s standards were too high for that. All of that mixed in with the marketing pull that can only come from, I don’t know, say a giant world wide sporting event means Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games for Nintendo 3DS is almost purpose built to make whoever spends money on it, just a little sadder about their lives.

I don’t know if I’d be this upset if the end product could actually be called a game. It feels more like some sort of button tester for my 3DS or perhaps for myself, to see if I can follow incredibly simple and brightly coloured instructions. There are a fair few events that you can chose from to play (57 to be exact), but for the most part regardless of what they’re dressed up as, all they boil down to is pushing one – or if you’re really lucky – a combination of buttons in accordance with the instructions on the screen. I almost got excited when sailing had me blowing in to the microphone and moving the circle pad, but even this ended up dull and not really challenging in any way. The few times I didn’t instantly win rounds was when the brightly coloured instructions I previously mentioned were too simple and didn’t fully explain what the game was asking you to do. Seemingly this game has crazier catch up mechanics than even Mario Kart, so as long as you put your game face on at the end of the event you’ll be just fine.

The graphics in the game are quite nice to look at; all the characters look quite fleshy in their 3D forms and it’s nice to see the models of the two series in the one place. The 3D is used in a minimalistic fashion; nothing jumps out at you or hurts your eyes, but the characters look plump. It’s not the kind of 3D that makes you want to reach out and touch what you can see, but it gives some aesthetic appeal to the characters that probably wouldn’t have been there on the regular DS. If you’ve played any of the other Mario titles on the 3DS the graphics on the whole have the same sort of style and quality, just with a bit less depth.

Unfortunately despite the decent quality of the graphics they aren’t really ever used very well. I decided to have a go at the story mode, of which I feel was very loosely named. It starts off with a nice intro video, where Bowser and Robotnik are upset because the Olympic Games are going to start without them and come to the obvious conclusion that it’s because the other contenders are afraid that if present the two will win all the events. Outraged they send out a mysterious fog to keep the Opening Ceremony from starting and thus postpone the Games. Its then up to Mario and Sonic and the gang to uncover the great mystery of the fog and hopefully get the Olympics started. There’s really not that much plot to it, which would be fine if the game didn’t insist on having incredibly long discussions between the characters against bland fog ridden backgrounds. It insists on depicting each character set realising that it’s not a normal fog and also making some lame joke about how they had “heard London was foggy but didn’t expect it to be quite like this”. Then an enemy character will appear and they’ll battle out their differences with an Olympic sport. I personally don’t understand how they can play these sports just fine with the fog but can’t actually start the Olympics with the fog, but I don’t think we’re supposed to ask those kinds of questions.

Tedious would be a polite word for the story’s progression, especially as the game play to cutscene ratio is incredibly small, but thankfully they’ve taken the Mario approach to voice acting. Each character has one or two generic phrases that they spurt occasionally in between lines of text dialogue. I much prefer this than having to suffer through the slow talking nature of recent Sonic games, but it would be nice to have some good voice acting in there. The music is reminiscent of epic movie scenes, with fanfares playing for races and cheers and applause from the crowed. The 3DS’s speakers have no trouble with conveying the sound and it adds a touch of bravado that almost feels like a jest, when coupled with the anticlimatic game play.

You may have noticed by now that this game has not exactly been this reviewer’s cup of tea, but I’m struggling to find the light in the dark, dirty, smelly, unhygienic armpit that is Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games. If I could have found a friend who was willing or also had the game to face off against I could see it having some potential. There’s something fun about seeing who can mash buttons faster and then declaring victory loudly over your now presumably former friend. Perhaps for younger gamers just having the recognisable characters will be enough to push through what really and truly is an awful excuse for a game.

There’s not really much I can say, if you’re thinking of buying it, I’d recommend saving your money for something a bit more interesting, like dry toast for example.