Game Reviews

What does it take to be a sporting champion? Along with physical prowess you must show grit, dedication and determination. You must be willing to make sacrifices and stay focused. On top of all this you must be a stupidly hot woman or hilariously ugly man, and display at least three characteristics stereotypically ascribed to people of your race or nationality.

At least, that's the case if you want to be the kind of sporting champion featured in Sports Champions. But more of that later - let's start with the good news. Sports Champions, despite being yet another compilation of mini-games played by waving a motion controller about as if you're playing a real sport really badly, is actually quite good. The reasons for this boil down to two simple factors. First, PlayStation Move works. It enables you to aim, hit, throw and do all sorts of other sports-related things easily and accurately. Unlike with so many Wii games, reticules don't wibble, bats don't jiggle and attempts to put spin on balls aren't misinterpreted. There's rarely any perceptible lag and objects almost always behave just as you'd expect them to.Second, while there's not a huge selection of mini-games in Sports Champions, the ones on offer are generally of a high quality. They have depth and offer challenge. The best ones accurately recreate the experience of playing the sport they're based on, while featuring the kind of fun elements you could only ever find in a videogame. Take the Archery game, for example. This is played by pointing the Move controller to aim and releasing the trigger button to shoot. If you have two controllers you can draw the other one back like a bow, which enhances the sense of realism but also adds an extra layer of complication you might decide you'd rather do without. In any case, reaching back to pull an arrow from your virtual quiver, taking aim and watching the arrow fly according to accurately recreated laws of physics is deeply satisfying.