So, failing an education on the Olympic Events, how does the game fare? Well it’s difficult to put your finger on at first. Fire up the Single Player game and you’re in for a three day stint of finger blisters and AI betrayal. Your homely console batters away at it’s virtual X and O buttons, rushing toward the finish line while you stagger away in the middle somewhere, knowing full well that if you put all your effort into this particular race, there’s not a Factory Worker in China’s chance that your fingers are getting out of this alive.

You have to pace yourself. I guess that, if in real life, you were to enter every single event on your own, you’d have to pace yourself too, so perhaps that’s what they’re trying to get us to realise here. They’re reminding us that the Olympic Games are not, repeat, not for gamers. At least not the fat ones.

This whole "emulation" of the Olympic Games permeates through-out. The computer will beat you if you so much as slip up on your pad or if you run out of finger juice, just as you’d likely lose out if you decided to stop for a picnic half way through the 100m sprint. Some events go on forever. Again, a direct emulation of the real life event. Table Tennis, for instance, is a fun little game, reminiscent of every other Table Tennis game released since Nintendo made it cool to enjoy looking like a ragdoll in your living room. Here, however, if you’re any good at the game you’re in for the long haul. Two matches per opponent, each one taking a fair while to beat as you wait for them to make an idiotic mistake. Then you work your way up the League. And again. And again.

It could well take you an hour to finish this one event. That’s a game in itself, is it not!? I could finish Street Fighter 2 in the time it takes me to finish a round of Table Tennis. And this is one of thirty eight events. You can imagine, then, how long it actually takes to play through a full set of Olympic Games.

DAYS.