Recenze Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 » Vortex

I’m counting on the modern era of official Olympic video games from Atlanta. The developers from Silicon Dreams released the title of Olympic Summer Games in 1996, which was a revelation for anyone who until then had only mastered the legendary Summer Challenge on their computer. Isometric graphics with great graphics and especially animation probably contributed to the fact that I do not despise the genre of sports games at any time of the day and I would play basically anything, just so that I can at least try it for a while. The same was true at the beginning of this year, but perhaps it would be appropriate to say last year’s official video game of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which was launched in Japan in July 2019, but only a few days ago it was launched in the rest of the world. The game tries to arouse in sports fans the feeling that the international sports holiday is really approaching after a year’s delay, and at least on paper, Segy’s latest work looks very good. Eighteen sports disciplines, cartoons, but more realistic graphics than in the case of the Olympics, presented by Maria and Sonic, 80 countries represented, including the Czech Republic and, at random, even multiplayer. However, a lot of tempting ingredients do not make a good game this time, and after several hours of playing all disciplines, I leave disappointed with the completely untapped potential and a large number of design oversteps.

The first thing you have to do in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 – The Official Video Game is to create your own athlete. I must admit that the editor is sufficiently detailed and especially in the first moments it will prepare you for the artistic style that Sega chose for this game. Unlike the previous accompanying Olympic video games, it does not strive for a realistic rendering and gives space to characters who act as avatars from the Xbox ecosystem. In fact, I can safely say that they look nice, are reasonably detailed, and if not for the places a bit of awkward animation, I would not have any major problems with them. Sega also allows you to dress athletes in a variety of costumes and crazy costumes, which you can also choose individually for each of the disciplines represented. As in other cases, however, there is nothing behind this system that would be reflected in the gameplay in any way, so these are explicitly cosmetic changes that you buy for the money earned by playing. In addition, you will have the tokens blessed after the first pass through all disciplines and it should not give you too much work to unlock exactly the outfit you choose in the catalog.

When even the offer is not enough

However, I understand that the meaning of sports games lies elsewhere, so that it is up behind individual sports, among which there are several non-traditional industries and several of them are punishably missing for a change. Athletics is represented by a sprint for 100 meters, 110 meters of obstacles, respectively. relay for 400 meters and there is also a hammer throw and long jump. The transfer to the water sports center is made accessible by 100 meters of free technique and 200 meters within the position race. There is also a choice of BMX, judo, boxing, sport climbing, table tennis and then a plethora of traditional sports, which are the most attractive on paper. These include football, basketball, rugby, baseball, beach volleyball and tennis, which could ideally stand alone and play the role of your own video game. But there aren’t many ideal things in Sega at the Olympic Games, so the common denominator of these sports is extraordinary movement, poor control, sad interactions and a very fast-creeping feeling of boredom. In addition to these shortcomings, this is due to the fact that individual matches and matches are very short, often in the order of tens of seconds, maximum units of minutes, so to make up for your own hesitation, from which the opponent scored a goal or point, is almost impossible and Restart and try to succeed again. In the meantime, however, the game takes quite a long time to record – even on the PS5, where the title is available in backward compatibility mode – and the ratio of the time you spend on the loading screen to playing yourself is uncomfortably equal.

This does not mean, however, that not all disciplines are fun and motivating for improvement. Personal favorites include table tennis, a 200-meter position race or a hammer throw, but even in these better cases, we can’t talk about anything extra elaborate. Most sports have very simple controls, which is understandable on the one hand, but on the other I would expect a better song or gameplay, which engages players in 2021 a little more than just pressing a button. And when that finally happens, the developers, for some reason, turn the tips of the control parties into a collector’s item, which you unlock with your successes. So if you are not used to looking into the control scheme of each of the disciplines and you expect the game to explain how to control it, you will not know for a long time that you can activate the start boost before starting to run or swim. You won’t know that the long jump can be extended by activating a special impact, and you probably won’t even realize that in baseball, you can put even more force into a shot with a shot by pressing the appropriate button in time. For me, for not very clear reasons, the developers deny the players at least some depth in the already shallow game, instead of including them with sophisticated gameplay right from the start and giving them the opportunity to really get rid of it.

Women, men, it doesn’t matter…

Unfortunately, the overall feeling, in which there is no room for any variability, does not add to the good feeling. So the same jingle will still play before the start of any discipline. The same voice will always inform you whether a qualifying race awaits you or a medal contest. There will be a strange muting of sounds and background music in all places. You will not hear the national anthems of the winners and you will never run in a different path or start on a different side of the climbing wall than the left one. In addition to all this, the developers decided that the Olympic Games are truly for everyone, and they mix men and women into all sports without the possibility of influencing it. The attributes that athletes have are just virtual numbers that do not completely correspond to the physiognomy of the athletes’ body, and a 160-centimeter-tall woman can therefore put an ippon on a thunderous judoka without blinking an eye. Actually, I wouldn’t mind against this mix if there was a possibility not to use this variant in the settings, but you know what, the game doesn’t even have any settings. No, really, the game menu only allows you to run individual disciplines, or start playing their pre-selected or modified file, or play multiplayer, either local or online. In the case of the first variant, two players can play on one screen, in the case of online, this also applies, but in addition, you connect to the lobby with others and play the online variant of the mentioned sets of disciplines. At the same time, matchmaking does not respect the achieved ranks in the sub-disciplines and the whole online game is not very stable or agile. Nevertheless, it expands the overall experience and is a certain motivation why not uninstall the game immediately after you go through all the sports once or twice.

Unfortunately, you can’t put hope in a training mode in which you also don’t set any rules for individual sports, so you always play table tennis up to seven points, rugby always with only a three-minute half-life and baseball for a limited number of innings. It is also a pity that the game was originally created in 2019 and therefore there was room to improve it for players, or to react even more actively with the addition of disciplines that would involve players more. The result therefore remains an interesting, but unfortunately very lifeless collection of simple mini-games without ambitions that you would like to return to them. I think that there is a serious lack of any shooting, even from a bow, players might paradoxically welcome quick-time events connected to diving or gymnastics, and in addition to BMX, I also lack rowing racing disciplines. In other words, I miss everything that is essential to the players that they meet in video games and the selection of Olympic sports offers it, but instead we unfortunately have a completely useless football, a parody of basketball and rugby, in which you will still remember the twenty-year-old deed by Creative Assembly. For this reason too, I cannot even call the game average, and unfortunately I have to warn you against it if you want to invest your thousand crowns. Rather, recall one of the older Olympic video games, or be swept away by a wave of nostalgia, pull out old keyboards and go massage.