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Winter Heat (I love that name) comes to the USA just in time for the Nagano games. Yippee! WH is the sequel to Sega's "cheeky" track & Field game Decathlete. Well then, on to the typical review type blurb thingy.

Graphics: A+

WH has some very nice visuals. The graphics are in Hi-Res and seem to be running at 60 FPS (not sure though). There is some clipping in the win poses, but hey, who cares about that! All 8 characters are very well textured. All the events look awesome too. The speed skating events have some cool reflections on the track (Very neat). I also love the painful-looking crashes and wipeouts. The menus and character select screens have a nice graphical style. I love the flamboyant character designs.

Music: N/A

Hmm… WH doesn't really have any music to speak of. Next!

Sound FX: B-

I guess it has some nice "Snow SFX". :) But really, the SFX are nothing great. The character voices are stupid, yet funny (just like Decathlete). There's not really much to say about SFX.

Gameplay: A+

This game just plays GREAT. It is so much deeper than Decathlete. The events are very fun and easy to play. It's not just button-mashing any more (There's a healthy dose of that too)! Now you must control your player using the D-pad as well as rapid-fire button taps and timed, single taps. Many events are very arcade- like, Such as the downhill skiing event that plays very much like Namco's Alpine Racer and Sega's own Super G, and The snowboarding game plays similarly to Alpine Surfer IMO (Also from Namco). The Skijump is my personal favorite. I don't like the bobsled and skeleton events, mostly because they lack style. I have not yet played the game in multi-player mode, but I do know that it supports 4 players.

Replay value: A

I think I'll be playing Winter Heat for quite some time. 11 great events, 8 cool (No pun intended) characters and great gameplay make WH a gold medal winner.

Overall: A+

Buy this game! If you liked Decathlete you will love Winter Heat. If you did not like Decathlete you will still love WH. If do/don't like sports games you will still love it! Uh, I think you get the picture. :) This is surely one of the better games to come out lately.