Ever since 2009, Sega, Nintendo, and the International Olympic Committee had teamed up to produce official Olympic themed video-games starring the various characters from the Mario and Sonic games. The series have often received mixing review, or just being middling, and with the latest game for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, you would think there has been some progression in quality. But this iteration proves otherwise that even marginal improvements can’t cover up its flawed ideas.

Mario & Sonic at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games is once again a collection of 24 Winter Olympic events, with all participants being from Sonic and Mario games for a total of 20 characters to play as. Some are newcomers, and each character has their own strengths and weaknesses. You can even play as your Miis. Events can be played in single matches or medleys, where you can play events in a marathon like style set to different themes, or a custom theme. There is also a challenge like mode which also functions like a story mode of sorts called Legends Showdown. To progress you need to clear some pretty tough challenge times and scores. There’s also a mode called Action and Answer, where you play a quiz game and answer question while playing the events. Lastly, there is online play to compete with either friends or people around the world. The goal is to earn points for your selected country, kind of like having a leaderboard. As for events, there are skiing, snowboarding, and sledding events which mostly play the same but with minor tweaks. Other events include Ice Hockey and Curling. Skating events also have different gameplay, with figure skating making use of motion controlled Quick Time Events. The other events are called dream events, and they are either mixed event types or are more arcade like versions of other events. The two standouts from the crowd in Snowball Scrimmage, which is basically a snowball fight with Capture the Flag. The other game would be Hole-in-One Curling, which plays a bit like golf, but with Curling pucks. Unfortunately these games are mostly ruined by a very terrible design decision that threatens to strip any enjoyment from the game.

The biggest problem with the game would have to be on its insistence on using only motion-based controls. Buttons are only used to navigate menus. To further aggravate this, the functions between events switch from either having to use the gamepad or Wiimote, all while not having a choice to use either. Not to mention that the performance of these motion controls is spotty, and many times you will need to recalibrate the controller to make sure it’s working correctly. Also, these jarring switching of control schemes all the time such as in the Biathlon. The flow of play is broken up when you have to quickly switch out controllers and re-adjust to the new scheme. You would think that with all the time and experience Sega had developing the games in this series; they would have learned to either get it right, or at least provided traditional button controls. There’s really no reason for it, and Sega excluded a few people who might have visual disabilities from playing the game by sticking with motion-only controls. Suffice to say Wii U Controller Pad Pro support is absent as well. Unforgivable.

At least the music in this game is nice. Unfortunately the soundtrack does not seem to be for sale. The graphics are also well done, with vibrant colors and shading used. Some lingering but small issues would be that some of the events are too similar, and that the game should have at least had more dream and party-based events. Otherwise Mario and Sonic at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic games is a very mediocre mini-game collection, marred by its unfortunate use of motion-only controls that don’t work very well. This game couldn’t even earn a Bronze medal.

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Overall