Sports Champions 2

A couple of days ago, I mentioned how two of my kids enjoy playing the Sports Champions video game for the PlayStation 3. Yesterday they received the next version of the game, which is fittingly called Sports Champions 2. Rather than refresh the games included in the first installment, the developers added a number of new games like tennis, skiing, and boxing. The kids immediately opened it and wanted to test out the skiing game after really skiing at Snowbird.

I was pretty tired and so I just sat on the couch and watched my son master the game in a relatively short amount of time. Unfortunately it is rather difficult to build a skiing simulator and this one has a number of flaws. The first comment my son made was how the controls are backwards. Sports Champions 2 requires the Move controllers and has you hold the controllers like ski poles. In skiing, you really want a quiet upper body and so having a platform to stand on would probably be a better controller. Even with this shortcoming, my son had an enjoyable afternoon pretending he was back on the slopes.

I watched as a few more of the new games were played and think it was a great Christmas gift for my teenaged children. I also think it helped somewhat with my son's skiing confidence. We went skiing back at Snowbird again this morning and my son found a good-sized cliff to jump. While he has skied off this cliff before, he launched himself higher and farther than the previous day. Of course I am willing to admit that his skiing confidence could be growing because the dude skis almost every single day. Though I am happy to report that my son would rather ski for real than play a video game. Hopefully that never changes.