Athens 2004 review

Owwww! My fingers really hurt! There’s a burning sensation as I type and I have that tender meat feeling of developing calluses on my left and right index fingers. All because of the bleeding Olympics. No pain, no gain it seems: athletes know all about endurance and so does this game, intent on inflicting the same kind of beyond the barrier mentality on its purchasers as those participating in this summer’s sporting event.

It’s all to be blamed on the control setup. Despite vast technical improvements in all other aspects of the game, console athletics games haven’t really advanced much beyond bashing two consecutive buttons as fast as possible to achieve speed and power. From Konami’s Track & Field to Sega’s Decathlete, we’ve had to endure this most vile of control methods to emulate sports and, unsurprisingly, it’s no change here. Well, almost: we’ll get to the dance mat in a minute, but for now let’s just focus on the joypad way of doing things.

Olympic ‘n’ Mix

For the majority of events, the game has settled on the X and O buttons to set pace with and L1 for additional jumping, throwing, etc. However, it always feels clumsy and never comfortable enough to be able to tap out a good rhythm with conviction. Using a finger from each hand, only the most ambidextrous of players will succeed in keeping up to speed with the CPU athletes. Whereas, switching to the alternative technique of rubbing the buttons rapidly with one finger is just as fraught with danger as the high ridges of the official PS2 pad’s buttons act like cheese graters on the fingertips. The 400m is enough to make you weep just thinking about it. Owww, indeed.

Thank the heavens, then, that the 800m and 1600m don’t adopt this punishing method, instead going for an on-rails analogue stick tilting endurance method. It’s one of the few events that redeem Athens 2004 from sliding into repetitive tediousness. Events like show jumping, archery and discus are some of the small handful that take a break from the norm and sooth the aching digits by resorting to steering or aiming and the like. All events are nothing more than simple button-pressing sub-games, though, however way you want to swing, toss or throw it. The game only ever comes together as a complete package because of the license it represents rather than as a cracking concept in itself.

Stamp Stamp Revolution

And so on to the dance mat, and what may have been the game’s saving grace for multiplayer shenanigans in the so-called party mode. Of the ten compatible events available, the women’s’ floor exercises are the most similar to the dancing game with you following the over-familiar arrows as they move up-screen. Don’t expect more than one tune, mind. The other events (running, jumping and vaulting) rely on the rest of the game’s method of using two buttons to control speed. It’s commendable that it takes a fair effort to actually get anywhere (running really does mean running) but it’s not good for your looks. In my experience, running fast on the spot involves some ridiculous hunching and tantrum stamping to make up speed as you try to keep as little space as possible between your feet and the mat. Hilarity for others watching, exhausting for the player.

Despite the fun involved, it just doesn’t seem involving or entertaining enough to appeal to more than the masochist chums among us. The multiplayer mode (dance mat or not) may bring out the challenger in all of us, it may even be funny for those watching, but the literal exhaustion and pain that Athens 2004 brings may just as well be converted into outdoor pursuits, or to games of comfort for the restful and lazy.

False Start

What’s more disappointing about Athens 2004 is not only what it has but also what it lacks. It’s baffling how they’ve managed to miss out certain sports and not others. OK, football, badminton and boxing could be entire games in themselves but why no cycling or canoeing? Especially as both can easily be replicated with button bashing precision. Even more strange is the fact that certain gender categories are missing. Why no men’s archery or women’s skeet shooting, for instance? This lack of gender choice continues into the subject of competition mode where you don’t even get to select whether to play as man or woman as you go through events. In fact, there’s no option at all to customise your player’s appearance (leaving British players, for example, to lump it with a male gurning, tattooed athlete for the 100m), surely an obligatory addition in this kind of game nowadays.

Let’s be brutally honest, the Olympics is nothing more than a repetitive set of action events compressed, in this modern world, into tedious technical fine tuning of human machinery, buoyed only by ancient tradition rather than entertainment value. It’s something that this game replicates only too well, incidentally, what with its painful button-jabbing to shave seconds off the time and its general lack of atmosphere. If it sells games, it sells them on licence alone.