Yep, it’s that time when some of the world’s countries get together, allegedly in the spirit of competition, whilst secretly hoping to whop the arses of those Eastern European chicks with di… erm, somewhat deep voices. That time that gives us a friendly reminder that it’s a leap year. That time when, invariably, another Olympic-themed game will be let loose on whatever formats are moving big numbers to be gobbled up by an unsuspecting and usually all-too-trusting public caught up in the extreme yellowishness that is gold medal fever.

Beijing 2008 doesn’t deviate much from the established blueprint. Take a mixture of both popular events and ones that are fairly easy to convert (but avoiding things like soccer and tennis as the publisher invariably has competing games featuring these sports), throw in some rendered cut scenes, send it to market then lay back and think of adding another solid gold cruise liner to the flotilla.

Herein we have 38 events from 10 Olympic sports, separated into track, field, aquatics, gymnastics, shooting and ‘other’ categories. We’ve decided to divide these into a further three categories: ‘yay’, ‘meh’ and ‘the programmers had better watch their backs, ‘cos if we get the chance we’re gonna go all Dexter on their arses’. Call us soppy old traditionalists, but most of our ‘yay’ category is filled by the events which don’t require a PhD in ambidextrousness majoring in flexibility. All the running events are pleasingly reminiscent of the classic button mashers, with a choice between alternating the ‘X’ and ‘O’ buttons, or waggling the daylights out of either of your analog sticky things.