Beijing 2008 for PS3 Review: Watch the Real Olympics

GeekSugar — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:30:43 -0700

I was really excited to get my copy of Beijing 2008: The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games, so that I could play along with my favorite athletes during the competition. Initially, I thought I was in for a good time, since the graphics and characters looked so darn good - they are fit I tell you - but unfortunately not all was well in Beijing.

In a nutshell? I haven't had "Mario Thumbs" since, well, Super Mario Bros. You know when you walk away from a game and your thumbs are sore and red? That's the idea, but I had only been playing Beijing 2008 for about 15 minutes. I love a button masher just like everyone else, but this was ridiculous! Almost all of the games require you to repeatedly push buttons to gain speed and power, while other events have you rotating your joysticks for far too long than it is pleasurable.

To read why you should watch the Olympics rather than play along, just read more.

The overall concept of the game seems fine – you get to play along with the Olympians in 36 different events – but it's the frustrating controls that ruined it for me. Not only are you stuck figuring out what to do after you've gone through the lame tutorial, you will most likely be doing one of two things: frantic rapid fire button mashing, and rotating your joysticks. Swimming, track and field, martial arts, gymnastics, weightlifting, the list goes on, and not one of these events is really that fun.

And only to add to your stress, you arrive at the Olympic games totally unprepared, untrained, and are no competition to your competitors, so you find yourself struggling not to come in last in every event. Now, I'm not a sore loser in the least, but come on. Olympic athletes that are untrained, showing up at the qualifying events and you are expected to place? It's kinda irritating.

If you seriously want to spend any money on this game, at the most it's a bargain bin buy. But if you're up for some punishment, you can pick up Beijing 2008 online now for your PS3, XBox 360, and PC. Just remember to wrap your thumbs in some protective tape first!

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SLR Cams Banned at the 2008 Summer Olympics

GeekSugar — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:00:37 -0700

The International Olympic Committee has already limited internet access for journalists covering the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China - which is bad enough - but now they are even imposing bans on professional camera equipment. The actual definition of "professional camera equipment" wasn't clearly defined on the official Olympics website, but many believe that this includes SLRs with big lenses (ones which would block views for spectators during the games).

Whatever the case, this isn't great news, considering you could take some amazing images with an SLR camera during the games. Although, if you are going to the Olympics, you can still take lots of shots with your point-and-shoot camera, which hasn't been banned . . . yet.

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