You'd be forgiven that in today's world climate that a game based on the coming Olympics in Athens would involve anti-terrorist squads fighting across half-finished stadia in a total blackout. However, this game is all sports, though you will find skeet shooting amongst the lineup. In an endeavour to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, Sony has jammed the game full off a real grab bag of events. There are the usual field events such as shot put, discus and javelin; for the long legged there is the long jump, triple jump, high jump and the pole vault; and if running is your event then there are the sprints from 100m right up to the 1500m and the hurdles.

However, the is no marathon. Athens, Greece, Olympics, and no marathon? We feel this is a huge oversight as we would have liked to have seen a marathon event that showed off the scenery of the city. [My thumbs couldn't take it - Ed.]

If watersports are your thing then dive into the replica of the aquatic centre and compete in freestyle, butterfly, backstroke, and breast stroke events. Notable omissions, however are the diving board events and the relay, and we're sure anyone could do a lot better than Eidos' ridiculous Sydney 2000 diving events.

If the smell of chlorine is not your cup of tea then you can hit the Gymnastics floor and compete in both women's and men's events such as the floor exercises, rings, vault and weightlifting.

If all this is not enough, you can move outdoors and compete in archery, skeet shooting and horse jumping. However, a few of us here in Gameplanet lament the omission of some of the water-based sports such as rowing and sailing and a couple of cycling events may have been interesting (something Eidos did do well). The former, especially, would have been ideally suited to the control format adopted through most of the game. When starting the game you can elect Arcade mode where you either play in practice mode or hone your skills in each of the events; a single sports event; or you can chose multi-sports events such as the decathlon. There is also a party mode where you can just face off against each other, which is designed primarily for the use of dance mats to get you stamping as fast as you can or with perfect timing.

You can elect to represent one of 63 countries including the New Zealand colours. For the Oceania region you can play as NZ, Australia or Fiji. Although it's nice to see New Zealand feature, we were disappointed not see some of the other Pacific Island nations represented.

Once you have chosen you country you will appear on screen wearing the colours of that country and all score boards will show your name and national flag. Although a small quibble, it is unfortunate that the designers have restricted players by what they can call themselves to a three-letter name. Half the fun of these games is to see your name up on lights against the best in the world and it does not evoke the same feeling with initials.

Actual gameplay revolves mostly around the "X?and "O?key for most events. For swimming, for instance, once in the water power and speed is based around how fast you alternate between the keys to coincide with the stroke. This tap-tap is rather crude and awkward when for something like equestrian showjumping you have to time and launch your jump with the trigger. Realistically you need to rest the controller on a hard service to do all of this. What we would have liked to have seen is a greater use of the control sticks where you pace the movements of the player by a back-and-forward motion.

The control system also lets the game down in other areas. Once again in the showjumping, where you utilise the stick to control the horse's direction, the slightest touch will send the lumbering beast well off track and more often than not you will miss the jump altogether. Absence of analogue control seems at odds with other portions of the game the only control you exert is the button-mashing.

Graphically the game is quite tasty. The developers have used a lot of motion-capture and it really shows in how natural the animations appear on screen. The water effects in the swimming events are very realistic and the use of real sports stars for some of the animations, and renders of the actual event areas, deliver a very realistic game experience. Where it does fall down is in the area of the background crowds. These have little animations and are just a blur of colour, but given the amount of work done on the rest of the game graphics, this can be forgiven.

Sound is adequate and in places can really add to the atmosphere. The menu system is well laid-out and easy to follow. The Olympic mascots regularly appears in the menus as well.

The spirit of the Olympics is about bringing people and countries together onto the field of human endeavour. The omission of online support, then is staggering. If there were ever a game that should have online capability this has to be it. Given the amount of game options it would have represented a good challenge and this was an opportunity lost.