Sega tries to bring some of the spectacle of the Olympics to the gaming world. There's the mad button mashing fun found in Track & Field, but also a couple of other types of games that don't require sore thumbs. But basically, we're talking about a collection of minigames tied together with the Olympic theme.

Beijing 2008 is divided into track and field, aquatics, gymnastics, shooting, and a few other games that don't fit into one of the above categories like table tennis, weightlifting, and judo. Track and field is where the button mashing takes place where the player that can press the buttons quickest wins the event. Gymnastics requires the player to rotate the analog sticks in sequence to perform a move. Other games may require the player to time a button press like in Dance Revolution.

This is the best looking Olympics game of all time thanks to the power of the next-gen consoles. Everything is very bright and clean. The character models feature nice animation and come in various forms based on the event. There aren't any real Olympians in the game, but considering the kind of roster that would take, it's expected. The announcers are adequate, but the music is purely techno arcade.

You can play online against eight players in any of the thirty events. Naturally, there's a leaderboard for each event. Some of the events have control problems, but there's always a couple that you'll like. However, this is a pure rental. Once the actual Olympics are over, you'll discover that the package simply does not have enough good material to keep you interested for much longer than a week or so.