It may be just under a year until the next Olympic games actually begin, but if you arm yourself with a Hong Kong or Japanese PSN account you don’t have to wait until 2020. That’s right, for the equivalent of about £35 you can pick it up and sample the fourteen events currently available. Rugby Sevens (Sept 2019), Judo (Nov 2019), Sport Climbing (Feb 2020) and 4x100m Relay (April 2020) will arrive as free DLC, bringing the total to eighteen events when all is said and done.
GAME MODES
Olympic Games on and offline, Ranked Games and Practice are the three main game modes you choose from. Within that you currently have access to fourteen events. These are 100m Sprint, 100m Freestyle Swimming, Baseball, 110m Hurdles, 200m Individual Medley, Basketball, Hammer Throw, Table Tennis, Football, Long Jump, Tennis, Beach Volleyball, BMX and Boxing.
It’s a really wide variety of sports and as you can imagine, some are executed better than others. First you create a character to take on your Olympic journey and the editor is surprisingly deep. Difficulty spikes between different events as well, so Practice mode come in really handy while you hone your skills and get competition ready.
GRAPHICS
Sega have went with a cartoon art style which looks great. This is not a AAA game and given this, I find it often best to steer away attempts at realism. The game is colourful and vibrant with a style that will appeal to all ages.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay varies from event to event and some work a lot better than others. The 100m Sprint is controlled simply by mashing X to gain as much speed as possible, but winning races unlocks new tips showing expanded controls such as how to get the best possible start and initiate a final push at the end. Swimming is actually the event that I thought had the most intuitive, albeit hard controls where you use the left and right analog sticks for your arms.
Some of the events that fall short of this level of fun are baseball, basketball and especially football, which honestly plays worse than anything I remember from the SNES back in the day. It makes you wonder why Sega didn’t decide to stick with the tried and true events we usually see in these games like the High Jump, Triple Jump, Pole Vault and Javelin. Still, while some events are clearly a miss, I appreciate the scope of what they are trying to achieve here.
TROPHIES
The platinum shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. There is a trophy for winning each event which can be done in Practice Mode and on the lowest difficulty. Meanwhile, the online trophies look as though they can be boosted via a private match. Unfortunately with not many people having access to the game yet, I haven’t been able to test this out, but I do have someone lined up to test it once he receives his copy from eBay. If this proves to be false I will update the review.
VALUE
It all depends on how well the game sells. Practice Mode and offline events are fun, but you’ll quickly have seen all there is to see. Where the replay value comes is in the online modes. If a lot of gamers pick this up come July 24th, 2020 it could be a highly competitive and fun online space. Local multiplayer will also give the game legs and if you are anything like me I am sure you will be able to fashion an excellent drinking game out of this.
OVERALL
While some events are almost shockingly bad in a 2019 video game, others are fun and highly competitive. If you can put a group together either locally or online you will have an absolute blast with the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020. Outside of that, you’ll need to hope online lobbies are busy when they light that torch.
-VDZE ✌
Reviewed on PS4 Pro. Also coming to Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.
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