Remember those track and field arcade games back in the '80s? You know the ones: gameplay consisted entirely of pounding two buttons as rapidly as humanly possible to make your character run faster before hitting a third button to make him jump, toss a javelin or discus, begin a pole-vault attempt, and so on. Those games were pretty popular for a little while, but they soon faded into the mists of video game history. The reason? They were fun for all of about 15 minutes.
But someone at HeadGames Publishing and developer Cat Daddy Games must have been pretty impressed with the tap-tap-tap action of those mindless affairs, because Full Strength Strongman Competition works almost exactly the same way - and it too wears out its welcome in extremely short order. In fact, the action is so lame that it's quite possible someone on a lower-end system would spend more time installing the game than actually playing it.
Full Strength Strongman Competition features six luminaries from the American Federation of Strength Athletes: Magnus Ver Magnusson, Flemming Rasmussen, Riku Kiri, Wayne Price, Heinz Ollesch, and Manfred Hoeberl (who just happens to be founder and president of the recently formed AFSA). Of course, only serious fans of Strongman events (or insomniacs who turn to ESPN2 in the wee hours of the morning) will recognize these names. After choosing one of these six guys as your onscreen persona, it's on to the events. There are eight of them, and all are pretty bizarre at first glance - but half the fun of watching a Strongman competition is puzzling over who came up with the idea of seeing who can flip a car over and over again the fastest or toss beer kegs an insane distance in the air. Other oddities include the Showgirl Lift (repeatedly lifting a bunch of bikini-clad babes sitting on a platform), the Atlas Carry (hauling boulders from point A to point B), and the Tire Toss (these guys are so strong they'd probably throw a discus around the world!).
This stuff is pretty fun to watch on TV, especially compared with traditional weightlifting, but it doesn't translate into much of a gaming experience. In the Truck Pull and Farmers Walk, all you do is tap two keys as quickly as you can; the Keg Toss and Tire Toss have the same simple mechanics with the added thrill of hitting the action button to hurl the object at the right moment. The Atlas Carry also uses the same two-button design, except you also have to hit the appropriate button to make your character keep his balance. The Showgirl Lift and Car Roll are basically the same game - you hit the action button to stop a moving green ball as close as possible to the middle of a horizontal bar - and in the Super Yoke you guide your strongman through an obstacle course as he staggers under the weight of two engine blocks.
Even if you think this stuff is fun the first time around, there's no way any event in the game can hold its appeal for more than a few go-rounds. Oh, wait - there's also a multiplayer mode, complete with a feature to search for games on the Internet. But even if you could find another unfortunate soul who somehow wound up with the game, the only satisfaction you'd derive from victory is the comforting knowledge that you can tap keys faster and more accurately than your opponent.
But I'm not going to berate Cat Daddy Games for the simplistic gameplay, because there's simply not much else you can do to simulate the events in Full Strength Strongman Competition. And I'd never dream of making fun of the athletes who signed up to be featured in the game - they probably had no idea their sport would make for such a lousy PC game. HeadGames, on the other hand, deserves a tongue-lashing for releasing yet another spiritless game that exists for one reason and one reason only: to make as much money as possible on the smallest possible investment.
