Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Review

Bitter rivals early on, Mario and Sonic have since patched things up and over the past few years, started to share the spotlight in games, based around the Olympics and while the initial games had great ideas, there was always that something, that was missing from them and it never got any better. With Tokyo 2020 the latest entry, is this a gold medal game, or are we stuck off the podium again?

From the outset, the game offers you two distinct options, the story mode or the events themselves, so let’s start with the story mode. Purely put, it is a bore, playing through it does result in some fun unlocks, but the complete slog you have to fight through is hardly worth the results, let me explain. The story is that Mario and Sonic are delivered a present, but it has no tag, being sceptical, they chose not to open it right away, this causes the senders, Dr Eggman and Bowser, to become angry. Upon convincing them to open their gift, in the spirit of the Olympics, they discover the Tokyo 64 system, but before anything else can be discovered about it, Luigi stumbles into it and turns it on, which sucks Mario, Sonic, Bowser, Dr Eggman and Toad into it.

Seeing something bad happen, in the modern setting, Luigi sets out to find some help from Tails and begins to hunt all around Tokyo for him, whilst in the game, the five additional characters start to compete in the Olympic events that are included, having been told there was no way out. But of course, as Dr Eggman and Bowser are bad guys, they lied and there is a way out, but it requires Gold Medals, so the group splits and they all start to get as many as they can. In the real world though, Luigi starts to get people to help, until Bowser Jr and the Koopalings get in the mix, then they are stalled for a while. The problem is with both sides of the story, only one character can speak at a time and between any speech they might have, they have to complete a static animation, the characters will just stand still, make a few gestures and then speak again. The issue with this, is that there is no ability to speed it up, have it move automatically or even skip it, you have to manually progress through it all.

This would not be an issue if it was fun, but the story is as dry as you can possibly imagine, there is very little that made me want to keep playing it, apart form the unlock you can get. Each time the story appears to move forward a little, Bowser Jr or some other bad guy pops out and steals something or teases about a new spot and runs off. When you are not stuck listening or reading as it he case, banal conversations, you are competing in the events and that is actually a lot of fun, especially the ones created for the story, which are the unlocks I mentioned. About the only thing that I enjoyed in the story mode, apart from some of the locations, is the trivia points that are scattered around the place, those were a mix of Mario, Sonic and Olympic questions and fun to answer.

Events take place in one of two times, the modern Tokyo 2020 or the retro Tokyo 64, which was the first time Tokyo hosted the Olympic Games. Be it in the story mode, or the events on their own, the games are the same, there is no difference ion them, but as with all things, some games are worth more of your time than others. Take for example the 100m or the hurdles, these events, are some of the key ones for athletics, but they are over so quickly in the game, it makes it hardly worth the effort to play them, on the flip side retro volleyball or Rugby 7s can take a while to finish off and are fun most of the time. In the retro land, there are only a handful of sports and most of them play out like they would, if constructed for the NES controller, a lot of button mashing and such and while there is nothing wrong with that, I just wish there was a little something more to them. One event, the rowing, requires you to rotate the stick, in order to paddle forward, in order to get a proper rhythm going, I had to Mario Party the thing and while a little nostalgic, was also not fun.

On the modern side, the events are all quite different, depending on the control setup you use, as the game will offer some real challenge, or still the same basics. Most of the events offer up motion controls as an option, but will all allow for basic buttons as well, some will offer a single Joy-Con as an option, which is great if you want to play with someone else. When the first game hit the Wii, we were given promises of motion controls that would make it feel like we are in the events and while they were ok, they never reached the loft heights of the promise, now however we are given a really robust set of actions, most of which work without issue. The only time I really had any issues was in the climbing and that was only if I had to reach straight up, going to the sides had no issues at all, and while running in the 100m with motion can get tiring, the event will only take 15 seconds max, so it is not an issue.

Perhaps the biggest complaint I can offer to the games is there is not enough in them, not in terms of the number of events, but the actual time in there, for example, the 100m has you complete one race, if you win, gold medal. Some of them, like Surfing, will give you a set time and then you can attempt to score as many points as you can, in the allotted time, which is nice, but it too offers no sense of depth. In fact the games biggest issue, is that it offers no depth to almost every aspect of itself, which is a real shame, I would have loved to be able to set a tournament up for Soccer and watch teams compete against each other for the gold, or in Skateboarding, have multiple runs, or even a second park to compete on. The game looks to offer a lot at the start, but quickly loses the shine and the shallowness appears and while the games you unlock are fun, some are just clones of mini games, in other titles.

If there was one aspect of the game that stands out, it is the visuals, the game looks amazing, from the locations of modern Tokyo, to the characters themselves, each aspect is very well done. As the game is an official Olympics product, there are obviously some restrictions that the team have to conform too and you can tell when they were allowed to do their own thing, as they have way more life to them. The venues, which I assume are modelled after the real world locations, are what you would expect at this point, the main stadium has the track and field, complete with all the lines and signs around the place, locations like the climbing are a little bare in comparison, but still fit the theme of the Olympics. The locations that are not filled with Olympic events, are like I said the ones that have the most life to them, characters are abundant and it feels more like a city, but for some reason, each location, all seems to suffer from invisible walls, giving you only a small sample of space to walk around in.

The characters are fun though, with both Sega and Nintendo characters looking wonderful as ever, even though I know hardly any of the Sega characters, they still looked great to me. The only issue is that Mario and Luigi don’t speak, so much as grunt or groan and gesture, but that is only slightly above the rest of the Nintendo crowd and when compared to the Sega group, they look downright out of place. When you go into events, each character, regardless of source or sounds, will dress up for it, so seeing Peach in riding gear when at the Equestrian course, or Amy dressed in a Gi for some Karate action is a nice touch. Characters like Yoshi or Vector, who don’t normally wear clothes, don’t get dressed up for the events, but might sport a little touch.

One area of the game that I failed to connect with, was the music, for two reasons, the first is that most of the events are over in a brief moment, meaning you never get the chance to enjoy any of the music properly and the second is that almost each time you are not in any event, you have to listen to the games main theme. Don’t misunderstand, it is a grand theme and fits far better in with he spirit of the Olympics than the official song, Happy and Peace, but you go into a menu, you hear it, before any event or after and you hear it, the problem is that there is just nothing else to listen to. Heck, even if you step into the Tokyo 64 era, the theme song is there, just in an 8-bit style and while it is a nice change, it too becomes quite the drag.

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is by far the best entry in the long running series to date, it has controls that work and a range of games to take part in. The downside is that the story mode is not worth the slog it requires of you to complete and there is very little depth in the events on their own, even the dream events are limited. Get some friends together and play most of the events and it will matter little, as there is enough fun to be had, regardless of shortcomings.

Review code provided by Sega