February 11, 2002 - Konami, popular for its Track and Field titles, has created ESPN International Winter Sports 2002 for GameCube just in time for the Winter Olympics. Bringing gamers a little bit of everything, the KCEO-developed offering features 10 popular winter sports for you to indulge including figure skating, curling, snowboarding, and several others. Overall, Winter Sports 2002 comes in a tight package and will appeal to hardcore fans of this multi-style gameplay setup, but lacks the Olympic license and enough fresh ideas to give it mass appeal.

Features

• Participate in any one of 10 fast-paced events including downhill alpine skiing, slalom skiing, bobsledding, halfpipe snowboarding, skit jumping, freestyle mogul skiing, speed skating, figure skating, and curling
• Trial Mode allows players to select events with aspirations of gold and record smashing in mind
• Championship Mode, the hardest level of difficulty, lets players pick one country and compete in all events with the hopes of becoming a hometown hero
• Represent one of eight countries from around the world including the United States, Japan, England, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Holland to bring home some nationalistic pride
• Performance characteristics and abilities vary between each country
• Vivid graphics bring winter sports to life with the spray of snow in the alpine slalom or the shimmer of the ice in the treacherous Bobsled run
• Utilize the game's two-player split-screen mode to go head-to-head for an in-your-face demonstration of speed and skills

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Gameplay
ESPN International Winter Sports 2002 is a simple concept at heart. It sets out to bring gamers some of the coolest winter sports -- a hot spot thanks to the recent Olympic 2002 Winter Games. You can choose to go straight to the sport of your choice via Trial Mode or you can attempt to claim the crown as Ice King or Queen in two gender-specific Championship modes. Trial Mode is the best option to begin with since you'll need to become accustomed to the different sports and control mechanics. You begin by choosing a sport and a male or female from your favorite country including USA, Canada, Japan, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria. Oddly enough, the snowbound lover of the cold, Switzerland, wasn't included. The following sports are there for the choosing:

• Downhill -- Alpine Skiing
• Slalom -- Alpine Skiing
• K90=Individual -- Ski Jumping
• K120=Individual -- Ski Jumping
• Moguls -- Freestyle Skiing
• Halfpipe -- Snowboarding
• Speed Skating -- 500m
• Bobsleigh
• Curling
• Figure Skating

The beauty of each of these events is that they all feature different control mechanics. Most are fairly straightforward and the becoming skilled at the event depends on improving your own skills. Certainly there is button mashing, but there's enough flexibility that you have to know what you're doing as well. In fact, there are a few great examples of the clever control mechanics. For Figure Skating, a female-only sport, the controls are very much akin to Konami's own Dance Dance Revolution. You choose from one of three songs, each representing a difficulty level of easy, normal, or hard. The music begins to play and you have to match up the direction of the oncoming stream of arrows with the D-pad. Everything syncs in with the tempo of the song, so you actually have to listen. Then during a brief combo sequence you can perform triples and other special tricks by quickly pressing a defined button sequence, such as B, B, X, A. You are rated according to your timing and ability to perform combos. The arcade style control definitely makes Figure Skating one of the most amusing modes.

Another favorite of ours is the Halfpipe event. It's one of the most demanding events thanks to a clever control setup. You don't control the snowboarder at all. All you have to do is tap buttons and directions. Sure it sounds easy, but it relies heavily on perfect timing. There are four target zones -- A, B, C, D -- which are randomly chosen by the CPU. You then have to press one of the four face buttons when a colored bar enters that zone. Depending on which button you choose you will perform a more or less difficult trick. Then you will see a set of arrows defining how the tricks are completed. To perform the trick you must press the D-pad in the specific directions. This whole process is just for one of the seven tricks you must pull off for the event. It all happens very quickly, so timing is of the essence. You'll have to practice the event quite a bit before you garner a gold medal.

There are some stinker events, however. Downhill skiing and bobsledding, two events that are known for their sense of speed and all-around extreme nature just don't feel right. The skiing is dull as a result of the lack of speed, and bobsledding is even more lackluster without a first-person mode.

Overall, the ESPN International Winter Sports 2002 simply lacks enough well executed and compelling sports to make it an A or even B title. We at the IGN office would have very much enjoyed seeing some more of the creative winter sports such as a biathlon featuring skiing and target shooting. More or less, the most entertaining elements of Winter Sports 2002 are the multiplayer mode and, perhaps, earning passwords in the Championship mode, which you can in turn post on Konami's site to see where you stand with other players. That said, the title loses it's appeal pretty quickly. You just don't get that drive to keep going because the gameplay is pretty shallow overall. It's a trait rather inherent to these types of games.

Graphics
Winter Sports 2002 sets a good winter tone with some decent texture work and lighting. In curling and the ice skating events you'll see mapped reflections overlaid by dirt and scratches. In the outdoor events you can usually see gusts of wind blowing snow across the screen, so the presentation is good. Furthermore, animations are pretty nice, featuring smaller details such as characters attempting to catch their breath. Everything feels pretty smooth and doesn't take away from the realism. The lower poly characters, however, aren't that impressive, and you don't see too many other texture effects outside of the rudimentary ground reflections to help improve their look. All the action does run at a smooth 60 frames per second, and for that we're very pleased.

ESPN International Winter Sports 2002 is a multi-platform title, and the differences between, say, the GameCube version and the PlayStation 2 version are subtle. Namely, in the PlaySttion 2 version, you'll see a lot more flickering and aliasing issues since its an inherent issue with the hardware. Still, the differences aren't enough to sway purchase one way or another.

Sound
The audio presentation is mediocre. The same menu music plays over and over again, and each event features only the necessary amount of commentary. As well the different sports are overlaid with a different musical beat to drive the action. Lastly, sound effects are also very basic. You hear more of the music and commentary than you sound effects from equipment and the environment.

created by da biszy