Ultimate Ski Jumping 2020

Genre: Sports (Ski Jumping)

Players: 1-10 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Ultimate Ski Jumping 2020 (later updated to Ultimate Ski Jumping 2021) is an Olympics-style Ski Jumping game released on PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020. As is the norm for the sport, players must take on jumps from various ramps to try to land a jump with the most distance.

The presentation here is simple but good, featuring some nicely-detailed pixel art visuals and a somewhat varied soundtrack with some electronic and pop themes, with some decent snow, crowd, and finish horn noises. It’s all pretty decent, and more than one would expect from a game this niche.

As for the gameplay itself, this game seems to do what it can with its premise, but there doesn’t seem much it can do with it. Players press a button to start sliding down a ramp, must time the press of the button to jump, and time it again to land. While in the air, players must use the analog stick or D-Pad to control the angle of their skier’s lean… and that’s about it. There’s an option for “realistic” controls, but that just means you’re using the L and R buttons in place of a single button – one for each foot.

There’s a campaign mode with a (completely disposable) story, unlockable clothing options (many of them just color swaps), online tournaments (with completely deserted online servers)… like I said, the folks behind this game tried to do everything they could with the premise… but in the end, this is a pretty simple game, and because of this, the $10 price tag seems awfully steep.

At the very least I can say that the gameplay works well for what little it does, though I do have to add the caveat that the game doesn’t really convey well to players how the angle of your lean affects your jump – it’s unclear just what angle players should be aiming for.

There’s not too much else to say about Ultimate Ski Jumping 2020. It looks and sounds good, and does what it aims to do well, but what it aimed to do is so simple and basic that I can’t see most players staying interested in this game for very long before moving on to something else.

tl;dr – Ultimate Ski Jumping 2020 is an Olympic-style Ski Jumping game, and this game does about as much as what one could hope for with that premise – the presentation is good, and the gameplay fundamentally works, it’s just so simple that I can’t see anyone sticking with this game for longer than a few minutes before getting bored and moving on to something else.

Grade: D+

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