So you’ll probably have guessed by now that you’re either going to have to be a massively devoted fan of the Beijing Olympics, willing to spend your entire weekend to competing against virtual athletes, or you’re going to need a few friends who can be bothered with punching a pad for a few hours. Other than that, the Single Player will bore you to tears, and some of the events will boil your tears.

In Beijing Olympics defence, it’s approach to the Track & Field genre is genuinely interesting. There’s very few copy and paste events here, and where possible they’ve tried to come up with new and interesting ways to play out, or emulate, the events at hand. You’ll be surprised, I’m sure, when it comes to Skeet Shooting, and rather than free-aiming, you’re presented with an aiming line to move along. It’s little changes such as this that make it a worthwhile edition to the genre at least, but it’s still hard to reccomend above the multiplayer line.

It’s mildly difficult to put a score on this too. If you’re a fan of the Olympics, as mentioned, then I reccomend going out and buying it. You won’t find any game quite so dedicated to it’s source. If you’re regularly going to be inviting people round who’re going to dig this sort of thing, again, pick it up, it’s a good laugh once you know the good events from the bad ones. If you’re in neither camp i.e. you’re a regular gamer who enjoys regular games at regular times, then this is the average score for you.