The Winter Olympics is never going to be as popular as the summer games, but it’s arguable that the considerably smaller selection of sports lends itself to video game conversion better than the 500 different running distances or dozens of ways of propelling/jumping/throwing stuff that some people dedicate their lives to. Eurocom’s latest effort at turning us into armchair Olympians features 14 ways of hurtling down mountains, down ice runs, over jumps and around ice rinks.

Vancouver 2010 allows you represent any of 24 countries in any of 14 of the most popular events in which you can either practice, try to claim the individual gold or set up a custom games programme to include however many of the events as you wish; in Alpine Skiing there’s the Men’s Downhill, Super-G, Ladies Slalom and Giant Slalom. Still on skis there’s the suicidal-looking Ski Jumping, and in Freestyle Skiing there are two other events including Ladies’ Ski Cross and Ladies’ Aerials. For snowboard fans there’s the Men’s parallel Giant Slalom and the Men’s Snowboard Cross. On Skates you can do 500 metres or a super-demanding 1500 metre race round the short track (y’know, it’s that event that looks completely nuts.) And for those who didn’t get enough sledging done this winter there’s Two-Man Bobsleigh, Men’s Skeleton (it looks like a tea tray) and Men’s singles Luge.

The Ski and Snowboard Cross events are performed on a course with several jumps and you have to press ‘A’ as you pass over them (there’s a green line at the top of each ramp) to take them perfectly. Jumping early or late won’t cause a fall but slows you down incrementally as you’re given a percentage score on how close you got to a perfect jump. This feels simplistic and although not easy to perfect, I can’t help feeling an analogue stick movement to make the skier pre-jump would have felt more natural and been a more skilful way of doing this.

The Ladies’ aerials are another event that requires accurately timed presses of ‘A’. The first press is gauged on a horizontal arrow zipping back and forth and sets how accurately your jump will be lined up. The second sets the angle of your jump, and then - depending on the difficulty of the stunt you selected – you have to keep an arrow or two within a green or blue zone by matching the rotation with analog sticks. Once you’ve finished twirling it’s time to land (the event is played in slo-mo) and if you performed all the other elements well another timely press of ‘A’ will see you get a good score.

The ski jumping is another simple matter of timing presses of the ‘A’ button, and your overall score is dependent on each element of a jump; firstly to launch when the wind is facing the jump (to give more lift) and then to be in time with your launch-sway. At the bottom of the ramp there’s another gauge to watch (similar to the “angle gauge” seen in some javelin games) and time correctly, then once in the air the jumper’s balance has to be kept by pressing the L or R triggers to correct the lean—as you can only play this event with the 1st person view it’s quite hard to detect which way you’re leaning and correct it quickly enough to get a top score. As you near the ground another press of (yep, you guessed it!) ‘A’ makes for a perfect landing. Again this control system feels a bit over-simplified but still takes some perfecting.

On the ice rink the short track speed skating can be done over 500 or 1500 meters. The 500m is a simple matter of tapping ‘A’ (who’d have thought it?) quickly enough to keep your skater’s speed up, whilst leaning round the tight bends with the L trigger (you only turn left). Bumping into other skaters usually results in your skater slowing down so careful passing is recommended, and you get slowed right down if you cut a corner and clip one of the markers, so perfecting the amount of lean required whilst positioning your skater accurately and tapping ‘A’ can be a bit of a handful. The 1500m adds to the difficulty as the skater’s speed is maintained by timely ‘A’ button presses as the skater’s blades touch the ice. This is extremely difficult to master and has produced much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst players I’ve played it with online.

As I mentioned earlier there are three ice sliding events; the 2-man Bobsleigh, the Skeleton and the Luge. These all play similarly although the 2-man bobsleigh has you steering/leaning both the front and back with the L and R sticks, the luge has you steering with the triggers whilst the skeleton uses either joystick. You must build up the launch speed by hammering ‘A’ and then jump aboard your sleigh before you reach the foul line, from there on it’s a matter of avoiding clipping the side walls and getting high on the bends whilst not losing control. The impression of speed is well done, but the control feels woolly and vague, and while it might be realistic it can make for some frustrating gameplay when you lead the split times all the way down and then just nudge a side wall coming off the last corner and lose. Aaarrrgh.

Once you’ve played all the events and had a go at winning the Gold medals there’s a three-tiered challenge mode. It’s not only a decent challenge to win them all for achievements but is also a good way of fine tuning your skills for the proper events; you’ll be surprised how easy the real skiing events feel once you’ve been down the same run either trying to ‘smash the snowmen’ or avoid them. There are also distance related challenges for the ski jumping and the inevitable speed and timed challenges. A couple of the challenges on the third mountain are so darned hard that I think I should pass the game on to someone else here at Gamecell before it drives me mad.

The game supports up to 4 players in head-to-head or simultaneous action online or in a split screen offline mode. You can make a private game or leave it open to all comers, and stack whichever events you want in your own custom games. Empty slots are filled by CPU players and as with the solo game the standard of these computer-controlled players varies hugely, with some times being seemingly impossible to beat, which is intensely annoying when you feel like you’ve done a good race and beaten any human opponents. On the good side, these AI Olympian opponents' standards do vary slightly, and most events would seem to be winnable if you get good enough and are prepared to practice the events to death.

Developers Eurocom have done just as competent a job with this game as they did with the Beijing summer Olympics game two years ago. The problem is that although the downhill skiing is fast and great fun to play (and looks very realistic from the 1st person view), it’s unlikely any of the events will keep your interest once the real games have finished. The athletes look good and detailed without being particularly well animated, and the game’s superficial nature is typified by the lack of opponents within each event and a lack of variation in the style of the events. The unimpressive replay mode means you won’t even enjoy watching your best performances, as these are reduced to edited highlights, and even manage make the downhill skiing look slow, unexciting and graphically challenged. Some iffy difficulty settings and vague or unnatural controls also consign the game to being no more than a bargain bin or second-hand curiosity-buy for discerning gamers.