If you've been keeping up with the Summer Stars 2012 developer and their recent releases, you'll have an idea of what to expect here. The game can be played in single player Career Mode or Free Play with up to four other players locally. Career mode starts you off as a beginning athlete who is competing in amateur events as he or she works their way up to a professional career. As you complete missions, you'll earn experience points that can be used to level up your athlete and make them better at skills such as running faster, jumping higher, increased stamina and more. There are 49 missions in the game, and each provide you with an increasingly different challenge that keep you on your toes.
In free play, up to four players can tackle disciplines and challenges at the same time. There are plenty of different events to participate in and include your more traditional Olympic events such as track meets, swimming, archery, pole vaults and the like, or you can even find more uncommon events like off-road biking. Humorous special events are included in the game such as squirting someone with a water gun while they are diving, taking flash pictures of someone while they're pole vaulting or other distracting shenanigans, and humor has even been squeezed into the game's loading screen as you see athletes talk trash to one another or even hear announcers get into it. There's a lot of fun to be had with Summer Stars 2012, and it doesn't always come in the ordinary events.
Summer Stars 2012 features a great set of controls that allows you to play the game with responsive motion controls on Xbox 360 with Kinect, PlayStation 3 with Move or on your Nintendo Wii. Each set of controls seems to work well as intended, but you can also play the game with a more traditional set of controls on your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 standard controller if motion controls aren't your thing. Combine that with some decent graphics and animations, high quality announcers, some pretty impressive sound effects and a fitting soundtrack, and you've got a game with an excellent overall presentation.
All in all, Summer Stars 2012 is a fun title that is able to overcome some minor hiccups to produce a game well worth buying and playing. You won't find a better game to live out your own Olympic dreams with, and it is one of the best motion controlled games to come out this year. The variety of mini-games and fun career mode go a long way in solidifying this game as one of the best around. Summer Stars 2012 is fun to play alone and a blast with friends, and it is the perfect title to hold sports fans over to the release of new titles such as Madden NFL 13, FIFA Soccer 13, NHL 13 and NBA 2K13 later this Fall.
Summer Stars 2012 is now available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii. Summer Stars 2012 is rated E by the ESRB for Mild Violence. For more information on Summer Stars 2012, check out the official Deep Silver website.
Game Features
Game Information
Developer: 49Games
Publisher: Deep Silver
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 & Nintendo Wii (Reviewed)
Release Date: June 29, 2012
