With the next summer Olympic games approaching quickly, it’s time for people to trot out some multi-event sports games that can be enjoyed by families. As a huge fan of such compilations, back to the vintage days of Track and Field in the arcades and the outstanding Games series from Epyx on my Commodore 64, I’ll admit that there’s always a little extra enthusiasm in the hopes they’ll be fun. With the number of events it is attempting to tackle right there in the name, there’s absolutely some ambition here, just unfortunately the result is pretty well all over the place.

Starting with the positives, this is definitely set up to be an accessible all-ages affair. Each event is effectively its own mini-game of sorts, and in general they all have a bit of a learning curve to them so that could encourage repeat plays peppered with some friendly competition. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how much variety the developers have tried to take on, the visuals are certainly on the simpler side, perhaps reminiscent of an improved version of Wii Sports. While the looks may lack polish, for the most part the game’s performance is at least rarely an issue.

Unfortunately, one the game’s biggest stumbles is also one of the most fundamental things that has to be right in this sort of compilation, and it’s with the controls. The problem is twofold. First, the instructions provided explaining the control scheme for each event are often completely insufficient. You can certainly buff out some rough edges for folks when you can reasonably explain or demonstrate what they’ll need to do as the event loads up. That generally doesn’t happen here. Second, there are events where even after playing them a few times nobody in my group could fully determine how they were meant to work. No matter what theories we came up with and tried out, it just felt like random chaos. Often compounding the issue further was the fact that the AI bots clearly had no such limitations, and would happily leave you in the dust… though by the next event they could randomly feel completely inept. With no means of controlling their skill level, and nothing for skipping or even speeding up their attempts, they were also a drag, and worse there appeared to be no way to exclude them aside from having 4 people ready to play.

Put it all together and there’s enough here that you could likely squeeze some enjoyment out of it with an understanding group. You could absolutely find fun and even hilarity in the inconsistency of the nicely varied events. My family was absolutely howling over some of the overall weirdness of it all at times, though that isn’t always the best way to enjoy things. If you’re looking for your Olympic games fix I’d encourage looking for sales on higher-tier games from previous years, or even perusing the competition. This feels like an overall effort that isn’t going to finish higher than near the tail end of the pack.