ESPN International Winter Sports 2002 GameCube

Great group game

By JayF  Feb 14, 2002 | 1 out of 1 found this ESPN International Winter Sports 2002 review helpful

This is a really fun game. I rented it and played it with a group of friends (it only supports 2-player, so we took turns) and had a blast. The events are:Downhill Skiing (Men & Women)Slolom Skiing (Men & Women)Freestyle Skiing (Men & Women)Halfpip...e Snowboarding (Men & Women)K90 Ski Jumping (Men)K120 Ski Jumping (Men)Bobsleigh (Men & Women)Speed Skating (Men & Women)Curling (Men & Women)Figure Skating (Women)Each event has a tutorial that plays before you get to try it (although you can skip it by pressing A), which is really nice. It doesn't give you all of the information you'll need to win Gold medals, but it's plenty if you're just trying to beat the guy next to you on the couch.Downhill and Slolom Skiing are very intuitive; you push the control stick left and right to steer, forward to speed up, and press the A button to edge (turn sharply). The slolom skiing was very hard to get good at, though. Without edging, your turns are very wide, and with edging, you turn on a dime.K90 Ski Jumping was one of my favorites. You hold the L and R buttons down to pick up speed, release them to jump, and then slowly push them back in to keep yourself in the right position, then press A to prepare to land.K120 Ski Jumping was much more difficult. You press A & B alternately to pick up speed, press L or R to jump, then press A&B to get more distance on your jump, and L or R to land.Freestyle Skiing has you pressing L and R alternately to ski the moguls (timing is the key - not just doing it as fast as you can), then just before each jump to enter your trick using the control stick and c-stick. Unlike the 2002 Olympics, there are no quad tricks. Only triples and simpler. (I found a cool feature which wasn't in the tutorial, but may be in the manual - hit the X button when you're in the air and you can cycle through a list of tricks you can do.)The snowboarding and figure skating events are almost more fun to watch than to actually play. To execute jumps in snowboarding and to complete the routine in figure skating, you must press a sequence of buttons shown on the screen. So you're looking at the button images and not seeing what your athlete is doing. But you're friends will be "ooh"-ing and "aah"-ing.In bobsleigh, you press A&B alternately to push your sled, and hit the L button, I think, once for each runner to hop them into the sled. After that you just steer left and right.Speedskating is your typical button-masher. Just hit A&B alternately to skate (slow down on the curves!).Curling requires the most thought (and gives you the time to think, too). You indicate the strength, direction, and spin before releasing your stone, and then press A&B alternately to sweep.The graphics are really great. The menus look like they were taped directly from ESPN. My friends and I played for a couple of hours, and then when they left I played for 3 more, so I'd say it's got a lot of replayability. Read more Less