PES was always the football game of choice over FIFA, and back in the annals of time it was a choice between either International Track and Field or Athlete Kings for your Olympic glory. Soon enough, though, the tides turned. We now approve of FIFA over the Japanese effort – something unthinkable just a couple of years ago – and now the same has happened with the Olympian sports. Granted, Winter Olympics titles don’t have much of a stellar pedigree, but this year’s official offering by Sega wipes the floor with this tosh from RTL.

The visual aren't all that great

Where to start? Frankly, it looks like an early Dreamcast game, with some astonishingly bad facial rendering and a complete lack of pizzazz to anything about it. But it doesn’t stop there. The presentation is so budget it hurts – we’re all for clean, simple menus, but this takes some beating. And as for the game itself? Well, a selection of half-baked mini-games does not make a good sports title.

Of the eight events, three are boring (snowboard cross, downhill skiing and freeride skiing); two are thoroughly pointless and just don’t work very well (ski flying and short track); one is downright awful (biathlon); one seems decent until you realise it’s terrible (figure skating); and one is all right, though really nothing special (bobsled). It’s a hasty mish-mash of similar game styles, none of which work very well in the first place and none of which will bring you back for more.

Controls are similar across the board – bar figure skating, which plays out like a bad rhythm-action game – and are as simple as you would expect. But it ends there. There’s no drive to master anything, nor can you actually get much better at the events as they’re so mind-numbingly similar and short. There are only so many times you’ll want to wait until the last corner in speed skating before slipstreaming your way to victory (it works every single time). As for the inclusion of adrenaline/boost? It’s just another pointless aspect.

Snowboarding is far superior in dedicated titles

Longevity comes into play through career mode, which enables you to build up a character by playing competitions. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, awful. There is no reason you would want to play this mode. Ever. Multiplayer does add a bit to the game, but that’s the same with anything – bring another few people into the mix and you can have a laugh with even the worst of games (just ask Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee on the original Xbox). The fact is, no matter how many challenges, careers and multiplayer modes RTL puts in the game, Winter Sports 2010 is still just a bad game. You might be able to get an hour or so of entertainment out of it, but soon enough it’ll be taken out of the console, never to return to the disc tray.

It’s hard to direct any real bile at Winter Sports 2010 as it seems innocent enough, and it’s always good to have a competitor running head-to-head with the official game. But this is just out-and-out bad, and there’s no point in picking it up at all.

Winter Sports 2010 brings nothing of note to the table, and that which it does bring is woeful – save the bobsled, which at least has a decent sense of speed. All in all, this is yet another failure to add to the pile of bad Winter Olympics games out there. Avoid, avoid and avoid.