3.5/5 ★ – Spongyoshi's review of Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Another olympics, another Mario & Sonic game and the second one for the Wii U! Those releases are getting predictable at this point, so does this game has what it takes to differenciate itself from all the previous installments and especially Sotchi? If there's one thing you realise when you boot up the game, it is it's bold presentation. Fun festive music, beautiful graphics and an HUD that replaces the main menu. While personally not a fan, it's definitely unique and I really applaud the creativity there! You can even meet other Miis on the HUB to talk to and sometimes, even Mario or Sonic characters who have a few lines to say depending the situation. A very clever addition! The game has a LOT of unlockables and some cool modes. There's free play, playing against online ghosts, options, Heroes Showdown (this game's sole "party mode" that's honestly pretty cool and can be played solo or in 2 players) and a Tourney mode, the main attraction. Except this time, instead of competiting on multiple event, you compete on a single event on multiple rounds as your Mii (that you can equip better outfits as you progress to increase their stats) against other Miis from all around the world! Each event has 4 levels of difficulty and as you progress, you'll start seeing Mario or Sonic characters as well and some will even challenge you like the Rivals in the older games! It's really clever and feels like a natural progression to a more authentic Olympic Games experience while also giving a pretty different feeling to the older games! But then, for such a game to work, you definitely need each event to feel solid! And honestly, the game delivers! There's one or two that aren't AS good in my opinion like Beach Volleyball but overall, the events feel WAY better executed than ANY other game of the franchise, getting rid of motion controls most likely helped a lot! While having a simple to understand instruction screen, they have a pretty big learning curve to learn all the technicalities of each events to finally be able to surpass their hardest difficulty, although it's a shame there's no training mode to help you out because it gets VERY tough in the end, but it's also VERY rewarding and almost all victories feel earned and incredibly satisfying! You can also unlock fun single-player challenges via a Carnival and those are pretty fun as well although you sadly cannot replay them at will which is a pity but not a deal-breaker either. If I had to give complains, however, it's that it not only it lacks a bit in terms of multiplayer modes (the only "fun" mode is only 1 vs 1, otherwise there's only free play) and that being locked to the gamepad in single-player is a bit of an odd choice, but there's also only 3 dream events and they aren't even true dream events as well, they're just taking place in Rio as well and are, for the most part, pretty confusing and not very fun imo. If you play only for those events, I definitely wouldn't recommend this one. But otherwise, if you love the competitive aspect of the Mario & Sonic games and feel like the last installments have been too easy and hand-holding, this game is for you! It's a lot of fun even to this day and I heavily recommend it! It's not perfect, it's a bit bare-bones in some aspect and sometimes a little bit unfair but it's in general a very fun and rewarding experience!