Featuring a range of snow-based sporting activities, Vancouver 2010 is a simplistically presented package with a rather sparse feel. There's no career mode here, Vancouver 2010 is all about pushing for perfection against an ever-improving leaderboard of players with Olympic-like patience.

You'll get 14 events in Vancouver 2010, aswell as a Challenge mode and online multiplayer.

Vancouver 2010's events may boil down to sequential button pressing, but that doesn't stop the game from giving you a feel for the occasion. Events such as the bobsleigh and ski-jump really focus on providing a sense of speed. First-person view-points are used to put you in the shoes of the Olympian, increasing the game's intensity.

Instead of providing an in-depth, Olympic-like career mode in Vancouver 2010, developers Eurocom have instead opted for a jump-in and out mini-game philosophy. Selected events can be played in one-off circumstances, meaning there's an emphasis for the player to make their own fun. Much of this can be found in the online leaderboards and the sense of achievement experienced when shaving a tenth of a second off your best times.

With the inherent lack of a career mode, Challenge mode provides some more objective-based tasks around the main theme of each of the game's events. Avoiding craftily placed snowmen while skiing, or landing a pin-point jump provide additional challenge to the game's standard events.

With such focused gameplay, Vancouver 2010's visuals are really given the opportunity to shine. Everything in the game looks fantastic. The visual appeal is also complemented by a decent pop-punk soundtrack which suits the action well.

Being based on the winter Olympics, many of the events in Vancouver 2010 involve skiing, snowboarding or bob-sleighing down a familiar route. Despite feeling legitimate to the source material, it can all get a bit samey.

If you're not interested in the niche that Vancouver 2010 caters, then you're going to find little interest in Vancouver 2010. In fact, even those interested may feel a little short changed by the stingy variety of events and missing-in-action career mode. Realistically, if you have no interest in the multiplayer or leaderboards, you can see all of Vancouver 2010 in a couple of hours.

Vancouver 2010 has a complete online multiplayer component we'll detail further in a future article.

Conclusion

Without a campaign mode, Vancouver 2010 is all about being an Olympian perfectionist. Players who push themselves for the sake of seeing their name aloft leaderboards will be in their element.