Absolute Summer Sports

The summer is nearly upon us and we're promised it's going to be a long and hot one. We'll believe this when we're lounging on a UK beach in a tiny swimsuit gradually turning an attractive shade of bronze. Or - more likely - crimson.

Still, sun or no sun, we're ready for some summer-based gaming. So we welcome the arrival of Absolute Summer Sports - a game made up of ten athletics events ranging from diving and fencing to shooting and shotput.

The controls for these are varied. For the 110m hurdles you have to bash a button to pick up speed, then hit 'up' to jump each hurdle. For the shooting event, the screen is divided into nine squares and you hit the corresponding number on your keypad to shoot when a disc is flying through it.

In the gymnastics event, your athlete runs from left to right on the screen, passing numbered icons on her way which you have to press accordingly to pull off flips and jumps. In the diving, you press 'right' to spin your diver then 'left' to straighten up before hitting the water. There's lots of variety.

Despite this, Absolute Summer Sports is a simple and straightforward game. Events last, on average, no longer than a minute. This means that there's not much time to master them first time around, although a helpful Practise mode lets you spend longer on each individual game.

Meanwhile, the main game strings together all ten events in varying order. It also pits you up against virtual opponents, each of whom scores in each event.

In order to win a gold, silver or bronze medal and pass the event, you must beat these virtual opponents. In the main game, you can only mess up three events out of the ten before the game ends and you have to start again.

This is a reasonable enough challenge on the normal difficulty, and hard pushes you further. As well as simply getting through the game and trying to win as many gold medals as possible, there are also world records set for each event that you can try and beat.

Visually, Absolute Summer Sports looks good too. It favours stylised cartoon graphics over any sort of realism - a look that suits the game well.

There are downsides however - the biggest one being the lack of a two-player versus option. The short games would have been perfect for a spot of head-to-head play. And, despite the events' various difficulty levels, it doesn't feel like a very long-lasting game. The events are too throwaway and the repetition of each becomes, over time, a little... well, repetitive.

It's a shame, because Absolute Summer Sports is close to being really good. Its biggest bonus is that the button-bashing skill-based games hark back to Track and Field-style titles of yesteryear, and some of the events - like diving and archery - require far more tactics and skills than you'll find in your average mobile entertainment.

You won't be disappointed with the quality of the games then, but longevity, and the structure and options surrounding them are a bit too lightweight to be highly recommended.

Still, if the sun fails to show this year, this will provide a couple of hours entertainment when you're sheltering from the rain.

Absolute Summer Sports

Absolute Summer Sports is a good-looking athletic compilation, and although it feels a bit lightweight, the button-bashing and skill-based challenges are fun
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Kath Brice
Kath Brice
Kath gave up a job working with animals five years ago to join the world of video game journalism, which now sees her running our DS section. With so many male work colleagues, many have asked if she notices any difference.