Nukezilla Review: Curling 2010

What is there to say about curling? Seriously, I have no idea. All I know about the game I’ve gathered from people making fun of it. It involves sliding stones on ice and small push brooms. Canadians go crazy for it. I don’t know. Needless to say curling isn’t a much-talked-about sport in America. In an attempt to get people interested in this somewhat inane sport (I assume), dadoo Games created Curling 2010, an Xbox Live Indie Games title.

Wanting to expose myself to something I knew little about, I decided to give this game a try. I wish I hadn’t. If this game is indicative of the actual sport, I have no idea how it became popular. According to Curling 2010, the game is played by chucking stones down an iced shuffleboard lane. Utilizing people with brooms to increase the speed of the stones, you attempt to get the stones within circles at the other end of the lane, all the while knocking the opponent’s stones away. The closer to the center you are, the more points you get.

I wouldn’t have known any of this had I not gone through the tutorial. It starts with an overview of the game, then the controls themselves. The controls just involve a simple select-power-than-select-spin-type shot familiar to players of any sports games. As I’m not one of those people, I found myself going through the tutorial a few times to get a hang of everything. From there, you move on to Match Play, the simple single-player mode.

Match Play pits you against up to three opponents, real or A.I.-controlled, in one match of the game. That’s it. On top of the sparse single player I was disappointed by the controls. Stones I throw never seem do what I want them to, whether that’s curving or staying in a straight path. In a game where strategically placing stones to stop your opponents from scoring is key, this is a big problem.

If the main game doesn’t grab you, neither will the other mode of play: Target Competition. In this mode you face off against an opponent (or opponents) to get your stones closer to an indicated mark on the lane. Rather than aiming at the big target at the end of the lane, you aim for a pink star randomly generated on the play field. Yeah, it’s not much different from Match Play.

Unfortunately, that’s all there is to do in the game. There’s Match Play, Target Competition, Practice, and the tutorial. Each mode of play can be set to multiplayer over system link, local, or Xbox Live connections. It’s nice to have this much choice in who to suck against, but I can’t think of many people who’d want to play curling with me.

What we have here is basically a minigame from any Winter Olympics game from the past few years (and you know how good those titles are). Everything about this is bland and middling. The one piece of scenery and single tune that make up the aesthetics of the game are all you need to know about the title; it’s boring, repetitive, and makes you wish you’d never heard of this lame sport.

(What does this score mean?)

Disclaimer: The review code for this game was provided by dadoo Games.