Beijing 2008 (Xbox 360) | 
 enlarge | From: Sega
Category: Video Games
List Price: £44.99
Buy Used: £12.89
You Save: £32.10 (71%)
New (11) Used (21) from £12.89
Rating:  19 reviews
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: sports-and-oudoors-games
Media: Video Game
Operating System: Xbox 360
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5060138438637
ASIN: B0014W8QRM
Release Date: June 27, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: complete with box and instructions in all round very good condition
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk
Embrace the competitive spirit of the world's most prestigious sporting event and represent your country and bring home the gold Appearing on next gen consoles for the first time, Beijing 2008 delivers an entertaining and immersive Olympic experience. The superior graphics capture the fine emotional detail of each event where a fraction of a second means the difference between winning and losing. The Innovative game mechanics challenge a player's time, speed and co-ordination. Compete for glory with up to seven friends online; strive to break records as you lead your country to victory. This summer show your patriotism and bring home the gold! 38 Official Events: Across ten Olympic disciplines, represent the country of your choice and compete for honour in Track and Field, Aquatics, Gymnastics, Cycling, Judo, Table tennis, Kayaking and many more. In depth Career and Competition modes: Organise your daily schedule and customize your chosen team with agility, power, stamina and speed for competition in over 38 events. Or in competition mode participate with up to three friends in either a single or multi-event challenge. Innovative Gameplay Mechanics: Use a variety of controls across all the events including a time based system where timing, power and angle are essential, rhythm based play that requires skill of increasing and maintaining speed, and a targeting system to assist in aiming. Global Online Competition: Choose your country and become a member of the Olympic team and face challenges from across all nations. A multitude of online features such as exhibition events, ghost times and leader boards will allow players to prove themselves before the world. Capturing the Olympic Spirit: The official video game of the Beijing Olympics 2008 offers full branding, realistic recreations of the official Olympic stadiums. The game offers you a chance to soak up the atmosphere of this prestigious worldwide and bring home the gold! Tagline: One World, One Dream, One Game
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great presentation, but a pain to play and incoherent. July 20, 2008
Mr. A. T. Whitaker
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
It had been quite a while since I tried an olympic-style game on a home format, mainly because I was getting cheesed off with joystick-waggling and button-mashing in earlier titles, mainly because both put a drain on the life expectancy of controllers and made me have to replace my joystick every month or so.
So here we are with the officially-licenced "Beijing 2008". It has a whole multitude of track and field events, gymnastic, aquatic (swimming and diving), shooting range and others such as judo, kayaking, archery and weight-lifting. The various events have their own controls, understandably, but the problem is that those where actions correlate (e.g. running in 100m and a run-up for the long-jump) do not always share the same control method, meaning that often you have to look at the tutorial or the instruction manual again to remind yourself of the controls in case they were not what you might have expected, which can be annoying.
Another thing that annoyed me was that, even in this day and age, when controllers cost about 20+, we are still expected to do life-expectancy-draining button-mashing or stick-waggling for things like running. Now those sticks on the XBox 360 controller, not to mention the triggers, offered scope for alternatives to these, some of which were explored in the cycling and swimming events, for example (where you rotated the sticks in opposing directions). Why didn't they also use the same sort of thing in the running events (where we are expected to waggle either stick if we chose to use it)? Surely this wouldn't have made it any less difficult while at the same time offering a less wear-and-tear-inducing way of doing the event? Or even use the techniques used in the high-jump and gymnastics floor exercise events, in which you pressed the button depicted on the ground the moment your athlete's foot (sorry!) touched it? This worked brilliantly, as it was reliant on timing, and your athlete's performance suffered if you either didn't time it quite as well or didn't press the right button at all.
While we're on the subject of consistency from one event to another, it seems very odd that you could, for example, be training in the 100m sprint in the Training section using one of the two running techniques, yet you could try exactly the same thing in the Olympics mode and it wouldn't work for you very well at all. I tried this approach with several events and I still seemed to find it considerably more difficult in the Olympics mode compared to the Training mode, which seems to defeat the object of the Training mode.
Other well-done events included: archery, where the right stick was used as if it was the arm operating the arrow (pull down on the stick to draw it back, release the stick to loose the arrow) while the left stick was used to aim while holding the right stick down, taking into account wind speed and direction; diving, where you stop the power meter at the desired power and the dive itself goes into slow-motion while you rotate the sticks to follow the on-screen markers' movements as closely as possible; and weight-lifting, in which you rotated the sticks in opposing directions to build up power for the snatch, then pulled the sticks down and rotated them outwards towards the up position for the lift (sometimes you would have to do these two actions again, particularly for the heavier weights) and used both sticks to keep two balance markers in the centre of the gauge for a short time to complete the lift.
Some events are notoriously bad, however, and one particular bugbear is the judo event. You have an on-screen arrow in which you move the stick in the direction the arrow is pointing to gain the advantage in the clinch, then you must press any of the four buttons (Y, B, X and A) in any sequence to do a throw (it's different depending on the order you press them in), and if your opponent tries to throw you you must press the first button that you would have pressed if you were doing the throw yourself -- which is as hard as it sounds. Ricidulous!
However, in each event you have a small meter which gives you a short amount of time to press either bumper to turn on slow-motion to help you pull off a technique. This is a nice feature that I do not recall seeing in a game like this before, but this alone is not enough to save the game.
Ultimately we have a well-presented (the graphics and sound are really good, as is the optional commentary) and atmospheric game which falls flat due to the uneven nature of the events, some of which are unbelievably hard. Even if you did enjoy the game, it would probably be best to wait until after the real Beijing Olympics have been and gone, when the product's price will no doubt have dropped (that's what usually happens with event-themed sports titles anyway).
 Track & Field for a new generation of gamers June 28, 2008
Loopingstar (London UK)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is great fun - not much has changed control wise since Track & Field in the 80's but the graphics really capture the atmosphere of the Olympic games . Single player is fun enough but it's the multiplayer locally or over XBox Live really makes this shine .
Great Game, but controls are hard! June 28, 2008
B (London, UK)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
A great game but very hard controls! I'm at a point were im not even doing the running and swimming events, because my fingers and hands are so sore! With 38 events, you will soon choose your stronger ones and work on these. If it didnt have the 38 it would have fallen very short and got very boring and fustrating because of the hard controls.
Overall very good and great graphics!
 awesome !! July 1, 2008
E. Bottomley
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
wow i was a bit hesistant at getting this game but i plunged in and got it !
i must say i am impressed the graphics are stunning and the gameplay awesome
yes the controls are hard but its soo much fun
i played for 12 hours straight and i couldnt move my arms the next day i can't play at the minute because my arms are so tired !!!
it takes so much effort when you do all the 32 events in a row online with other xbox live people
be prepared to sweat , burn and ache if you buy this game
but it's all worth it when you smash those records :)
Amazing graphics - hard controls June 28, 2008
Cj Rutter (Solihull, United Kingdom)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Beijing 2008 is a great game. The controls are quite hard to master but the sheer amount of events you can partcipate in keeps you playing.
The graphics are stunning on 1080 and the gameplay is fluid.
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