Speed skating has some potential, but again, the old Epyx Winter Games has this one beat. Actually it's the same control except instead of going left/right in rhythym on the joystick, you have to hit buttons A and B. In higher levels you have to steer but on easy mode, it's ridiculously easy.

Cross Country Skiing is enjoyable in real life but again, horribly boring here. You have to balance your 'sprinting' with your 'tucking' but whenver you're going uphill you slow to a crawl. It is jut not fun.

The Biathlon is a combination of Cross Country Skiing with shooting – once lying prone and another time standing up. In the old C64 game, your pulse was monitored throughout – the higher your pulse, the harder it was to shoot. Torino does the same thing here, but the way they do them is different. You can take out the targets in any way you'd like in this game. You are assessed a time penalty if you miss a target.

The Bobsleigh and Luge are very similar races, even performed on the same track. In the bobsleigh, you're in a Bobsled, and on the luge, you're pretty much on your own, flying down the track on a lovely ice paddle. Again you're just steering left and right, making sure you don't hit the sides of the track.

Graphics in the game are passable but you'd be hard pressed to think you're in Italy. Control of the game is almost too simple – I've seen web games that have more skill required than this on the easy levels.

Don't get me started about the audio. The play by play is just plain awful. You'll hear the same commentary over and over again – especially if you hit the wall in ‘bobsleigh' or luge. Every time you are shown a split time in any event, you'll hear comments that may or may not pertain to you.

In a truly bizarre fashion, you don't win timed events by having the best time. Instead, your time is converted into points. Seriously, I'm not making this up. The records are shown in points! You can go back and view the actual times from the main menu, but on the official records for each game if you're running all of the events, it's your score that wins. I'm sorry, did I ask for the Olympics to become and arcade game? What the heck where the developers thinking here?

Also, when you compete, the developers decided to make it gender-equal, so some events are ‘women's' and others are ‘men's' but you can't decide. So if you're a guy, named "Dan", you'll be racing the downhill as a woman named Dan. If you think that's bad, wait until you see the names of the other competitors. Oh wait, they don't have names! That's right – their names are "Computer 1" and "Computer 5." You've got to be kidding me!

So, since the single player is so bad, at least there's multiplayer…well, not really, because this game doesn't even support Xbox Live. It does support single console multiplayer, but at this point, BFD.

Seriously, I've seen shockwave games that had more excitement than this. For $20, do not buy this under any circumstances and instead pick up a one month subscription to GameTap . You'll have $5 left over, the ability to play 349 other games, and you can play the original Winter Games and have a lot more fun than this. Just stay away from the figure skating. Check out the Winter Games Wikipedia for a nice history lesson.