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If you’ve been stuck at your desk non-stop for the past few weeks, you just missed the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Don’t worry, it wasn’t amazing; the hosts took top place, with America coming in third despite having the most medals in total. Either way, if you watched some of the events and felt the need to give them a try, you can play these apps 365 days a year! We’ve got curling, snowboarding, ski jumping and ice hockey to show you, but it’s worth a mention that the official Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 game hit the app store this week, taking a cartoon angle on the favorite sports from the games. For apps specific to a single game, however, read on.

Age of Curling

It’s no surprise to learn that curling isn’t the most popular sport. Why that is could be anyone’s guess. It seems to be around for a couple of weeks for the Winter Olympics, then no one hears much about it for another four years. Maybe you haven’t been watching the Olympics, or maybe your eyes were glued to every heat, sport and race, hoping to catch another glimpse of your nation’s curlers’ smooth action on the ice. Okay, if you’re that second scenario, go take a break. Otherwise, grab your iPhone or iPod touch and check out Age of Curling in the App Store.

Age of Curling is the best curling experience on the iPhone. The graphics are crisp, and the user interaction is incredibly intuitive. For example, how would you imagine you set the stone sliding? You guessed it—swipe your finger vertically up the screen. To sweep the stone as it’s moving? Correct again—swipe horizontally as quickly as possible. Adding spin to the stone is done by twisting the stone before releasing it, and that’s all you really need to know to start playing. It’s that simple.

You can choose to play against the computer or a friend (on the same device). There are five individual venues from which to select, with great graphics in each. Despite the game feeling heavy (in the sense that there’s a lot of data/graphics involved), it shows no signs of lagging while you play. In curling, every millimeter counts, so the entire action needs to be as smooth as possible. Age of Curling has no issues in this area. If you’ve ever shown any interest in curling, or you’re simply looking for a new, interesting game to try out, take a look at Age of Curling.

X2 Snowboard

Snowboarding is likely the most popular winter-sports activity, but like most, it’s not too easy to just grab a board and have a go—what with the lack of snow in many places. As a result, there are many great games that aim to recreate the snowboarding experience, and X2 Snowboarding is one of those great titles made for the iPhone OS.

The controls are easy to understand; there are tips throughout your first run, and the graphics are similar to that of the Nintendo DS. Unfortunatley, the music is a little repeatitive and doesn’t quite fit the “coolness” of snowboarding, but it’s not a deal-breaker. The game’s physics are fairly realistic, but take a short time to get used to; hitting the ramps takes a couple of tries when you’re starting out. There is the option of multiplayer races, restricted to using the same wireless network or bluetooth connection, giving you the option to challenge your friends. Allowing multiplayer over the Internet would be a great step forward, but as the graphics and physics are quite powerful, playing over the Internet would likely cause some lagging issues, and we don’t want that.

The snowboarding itself is great in this game. Everything is right, and there are enough options for tricks, speed boost and more to keep you entertained without overloading the display. What seems to let this game down however, is the menu system. There doesn’t appear to be the option of different race types—you simply select to race, and following the loading screen, you’re on the slopes ready to go. If you’re only looking to race, this works great, but I feel more could be added to the game to make it a better experience and a little more challenging. You can select courses and characters as you progress, but when you first start out, you’re limited in what you can do.

The snowboarding itself is amongst the best I’ve seen so far on the iPhone, and if the menu structure and methods of gameplay were brought up to the same level, we’d have the snowboarding iPhone game on our hands.

Magnetic Sports Hockey

I’m no game developer, and I can’t imagine develping any game is easy, but to create a complete physics engine for any team-based sport must be one of the harder programming tasks to accomplish. Tere’s a lot that could be happening at any one time, and each time it happens, there should be some difference. As a result, Magnetic Sports Hockey takes more of a table-hockey approach. Only one player moves at a time, and even at that, only on a 360-degree spin. The puck is hit around and is given to the closest player when it has slowed down enough. The only player you have the ability to move is the goal-keeper who can slide the length of the goal to save.

You’d think this would take away from the game, but actually, it doesn’t. Sure, if you were expecting a full-on EA Sports approach, you’re maybe looking at the wrong app. This is more of an arcade game based on ice hockey, and we all love a visit to the arcades, right?

The graphics are a little simpler than the two previous games, although pixelation only occurs on the moving objects. The arenas and menu systems both look great. A bonus to using simpler graphics means you have the option of playing online through both a local wireless connection and Bluetooth, but also via the Internet. Magnetic Sports Hockey uses the (almost) standard for mobile gaming, OpenFeint, to connect you to players across the globe with minimal lag.

This game may not satisfy the ice hockey fanatic, but it can’t be denied that it’s fun playing ice hockey with both teams consisting on penguins, where the goals themselves are igloos. Thats right, go take a look.

Ski Jump & Ski Jumping 2010

As with snowboarding, there are quite a few games that can try out on the App Store when it comes to ski jumping. To make things a little easier for you, here are two for a little comparison. To start, they’re both $2.99, and both have a lite version to take for a spin, and while they both allow you to ski jump, they’re still quite different apps.

Ski Jump seems to be the smaller of the two. The artwork is focused on cartoons rather than real life, but the graphics look great for what they are. The in-game graphics are quite basic, with every passing tree looking suspiciously similar, but we can live with that.

There’s no sound in the game, which is fine with me, but it may feel a little on the quiet side for some people. The actual ski jumping appears to edge on the side of caution, with a tap and hold to ski, release to jump, and slight movements through the accelerometer to stay in the air for as long as possible. This way, at least, you find yourself improving quite quickly, and there’s a certain want to improve with every jump.

You can play friends over a local wireless network, but unlike Ski Jumping 2010, there’s no support for Open Feint to play online. If I had to, I would group Ski Jump with MS Hockey. They’re both sport-related games, but offer a more…fun approach, rather a serious competitiveness. I’ve found myself spending considerable amounts of time in Ski Jump, and so might you.

Ski Jumping 2010 takes the more competitive approach to the sport. The app starts with two videos as part of the loading process. Skipping these each time gets annoying after the first time of playing.

Within the single player mode, you’re free to try a single event, practice with the training mode, or take to the slopes with the aim to win in either a team or world cup event. In each of these, you earn trophies, and also achievements in a similar fashion to Xbox Live. The achievements come as a result of this game using Open Feint. Unfortunately, playing online via the Internet isn’t possible in Ski Jumping 2010. Instead, Open Feint simply stores data about the game and ranks you on how well you’re doing. It’s probably a good thing that the game is limited in multiplayer, as the menu systems already lag between options, so I doubt the game would cope well with online multiplayer.

So, the majority of the time you’ll be playing the single player modes. There are plenty of slopes and races to choose from, and unlike Ski Jump, the trees are made up from two different shades of green. When comparing the two, Ski Jumping 2010’s interface appears too crowded; there’s almost too much going on. It’s hard to see when the character falls on a jump, as trees are on both sides of the slope.

Given the choice between the two, I’d take Ski Jump. Not because it’s more technical and the graphics are so life-like, but because, overall, it provides the better experience and allows you to jump without any distractions.

Appletell Rating for Ski Jump: 4/5
Buy Ski Jump

Appletell Rating for Ski Jumping 2010: 3/5
Buy Ski Jumping 2010