Our Summer Sports Review - Dog Days of Summer

Our Summer Sports

Our Summer Sports is a collection of 10 summer-themed minigames from Sat-box, a very prolific maker of cheap bundles of themed minigames. I keep buying these because they're stupidly cheap on sale and, if not exactly good, are usually entertaining enough for an hour or so. This one doesn't depart from their typical fare at all.

The games are surfing, jet skiing, scuba diving, beach volleyball, golf, "water slider", beach flags, road racers, beach soccer, and canoeing. It seems like they're always in exactly that order if you're playing the tournament mode, which just means playing all the games back-to-back and eventually crowning a champion based on aggregate points. Almost all of these games are less involved than they sound. Surfing is mostly just about jumping off of waves, golf is actually just two rounds of trying to be close to the pin on the same incredibly simple hole, beach volleyball is half controlled by the computer, and the four racing games all only have one course each. Beach soccer is a little more fleshed out, probably because Sat-box already has a standalone soccer game, and scuba diving is at least unique. You're swimming around trying to photograph as many fish as possible in that one.

None of these games are completely dreadful like in some of Sat-box's other collections, but none of them are very interesting, either. I found some of the control configurations unintuitive and several of the games make you waste a lot of time watching the computer play even if you mash the skip button. The AI is also completely incompetent at several of the other games, but that's probably less of an issue if you're playing with friends. I'd be careful about three player, though, since one person will have to team up with the bot in some games and will be at a significant disadvantage.

So, all in all, it's fine. Like with most of the other Sat-box games, I think it'll mostly be worth it for people playing with kids. The games are simple enough that even young ones should be able to pick them up and understand the goals pretty quickly, and the AI is bad enough that it won't be too frustrating. This could be fun for one round with a group of older people as well, but I don't think you'll get much more than that out of it. For the $2 sale price, I'd say it's just about worth it.

Rating: 70%

Time to beat: About 30 minutes for a tournament.

MSRP: $10, but $2 on sale

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