This review originally appeared on this site in August of 2005, now revived for your reading pleasure.
Surely that had to be a typo. I can get a copy of an official video game of the Olympics for a mere $1.99? A game that features Men’s Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom, Women’s Freestyle Skiing Aerials, Men’s Two-man Bobsleigh, Ladies’ Alpine Skiing Slalom, Men’s Ski Jumping K120 Individual, and Men’s Alpine Skiing Downhill? Snatch that up!
Let’s take a look at the system requirements for this game:
- 450 MHz Pentium III or equivalent
- Windows 95/98/Me/XP
- 128MB RAM
- 100% DirectX 8.0a-Compatible 16MB 3D accelerated card
- Windows 98/Me/XP-compatible sound card (100% DirectX 8.0a-compatible)
- 4X CD-ROM Drive
- 300MB Hard Disk Space
- 100% Windows-compatible mouse and keyboard
I’ve got all of those wrapped up and then some, so I plunked down my two bucks and headed home. The manual talks for thirty-odd pages telling me how awesome this game is. On page 9, for example, it says that:
There are five options [for difficulty]:
- Beginner
- Novice
- Intermediate
- Expert
- Legend
Note: It’s best to start with Beginner difficulty before working up to Legend.
I also learned that out of the 84 countries that competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics that I could choose to represent any one of the 16 that the developers thought were important enough to include. I thought that was nice of them.
Once I installed the game, I came to a perplexing problem. Although my machine exceeded all of the requirements, the game refused to run no matter what options I chose. I thought that since the game’s three years old there could be a patch. I checked. No patch. Well, maybe there’s a known issue. Turns out I get this page which says my video card (a GeForceFX) came out after the game did, and as a result, the game won’t run and will never run on my machine unless I downgrade the video card. The only other computer I have in the compound that has a CD-ROM drive is an old laptop that doesn’t have DirectX 8.0a drivers for its hardware. So, I just shelled out two dollars for a box, an instruction pamphlet, a couple of Eidos catalogs, and a coaster.
And it’s still better than that N*Sync game I bought.
Game Name: Salt Lake 2002
Platform: PC
Purchased from: EBGames
Amount of money I wasted on it: $1.99
One word summary: Paperweight