Publisher: Sega
Developer: Eurocom
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now
Reviewer: Christopher J. Troilo

Every four years, the world’s greatest athletes come together, placing aside global differences, to compete before the eyes of all nations. This August marked the 29th occurrence of this event in the modern era—the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Beijing, China, was named the host city nearly seven years ago, and finally, after much deliberation and planning, the athletes have embarked on the last leg of their journey to be the very best at what they do.

This year, the Opening Ceremony was watched in some manner by an estimated 4 billion people across the globe, more than any other event in history. Olympic Fever caught hold, and there are many outlets for fans to show their pride and to be a part of the Games. Since the chances of being on the medal stand are slim for most of us, the digital world offers the closest thing we can get to experiencing going for the gold—this year’s official video game for the Olympics, simply titled Beijing 2008.

In Beijing 2008, you pick a country from an amazing 38 choices. From there, you can start off slowly in Training Mode, in which you can attempt any of the 38 possible events. You choose your sport and the gender of your avatar, and then compete against yourself so you can get a handle on how each individual event works, with an opportunity to view a tutorial ahead of time. Once you become comfortable, you can try the Competition Mode to get a sense of how you’ll fair against your fellow athletes when the real games begin.

Career Mode is the ultimate single-player experience. You take a team through of series of events, starting with qualifying rounds and then finals competition in almost all of the sports the game has to offer. To qualify, you have to land in the top spots for a running and swimming race, make high marks in the long jump and throw for the fences in the shot put. As you climb higher in the rankings in each event, your team earns experience points. In between days of competition, these points can be distributed as you see fit in your team’s attributes, such as speed, agility and endurance, which build up your players to keep them competitive.