The OXM Summer Games

It's the Olympics, don't you know, and while we'd love to put our chiseled journalistic bodies to service in the stadium, we've been far too busy playing Olympics videogames.

Which of this summer's inevitable licensed titles deserves a trophy? Mike, Matt, Log and Ed got together to test the waters of the official Olympics game, and the two carefully-unbranded, not-at-all-location-specific alternatives that just happened to be released at the same time.

Summer Challenge Athletics Tournament

Publisher DTM Developer 49 Games

We're used to games being boring. We're used to them being off-puttingly difficult. Physically uncomfortable's a new one on us. As with most athletics games, this one can be boiled down into a parade of QTE-style dexterity and reaction tests. Unfortunately, much of the action has been placed on the right stick rather than the more traditional mashing of buttons. We understand the 'no pain, no gain' mantra that carries many sports stars to Olympic glory, but we never expected Athletics Tournament to miniaturise the punishment and apply it to our poor, twisted claws.

We attempted several exotic grips in an attempt to keep the pad stable and maximise our performance, but none of them convinced us that the end result would be anything other than a broken thumbstick and repetitive strain injury. The few sports in the game that don't require you to wear the stick into a fine dust tend to be standard quick-time events, which we're convinced, in terms of video game interactivity, is like listening to an entire stadium gig from the bathrooms. Every single event in the game can be described as either excruciating, tedious or, in some unfortunate cases, a mixture of both.

As a garnish, the game is ugly and structured in such a way that you'd need titanic amounts of willpower to endure the entire career mode. We'd suggest multiplayer as incrementally more fun, but if you did decide to present this to your friends, you'd find they'd cease to be your friends very quickly indeed.

Verdict: Puts the "limp" in Olympic

Score: 2/10

TRAMPOLINE CHAMPION: MATT

I've never been a huge fan of anything that involves specific limb-precision, which is why the trampoline makes perfect sense. It's basically just bouncing up and down, occasionally shouting words like 'straddle' or 'pike'. It doesn't even matter if you fall over, providing you don't stop shouting and bouncing. My expert knowledge of the real-world sport transferred seamlessly into the game, allowing me to secure the gold medal with ease.

Despite my boundless grace and physical prowess, some of my competitors were visibly seething with jealousy. Some even went as far as to point out that the game was little more than a chain of timed button-inputs that didn't have any real connection to sport. For the sake of avoiding full-on fisticuffs, I took the moral high ground and purposefully lost at every other event, including those that had already taken place.