Michelle Kwan Figure Skating

Michelle Kwan Figure Skating

Graceful. Fluid. Elegant. Words you'd never use to describe a video game, right? Words we thought we'd never use either…until now. Michelle Kwan Figure Skating is a competitive, fun figure skating simulation that succeeds on many levels; it's rewarding, creative, and deep--and, guess what, it's also graceful, fluid, and elegant.

19-year old World Champion figure skater Michelle Kwan is the inspiration for EA's foray onto the skating rink, and her influence abounds throughout the game. Everything from Kwan's image and voice to her favorite routine and trademark moves are here, so anyone can take to the ice as the decade's most decorated skater.

Your objective in Michelle Kwan Figure Skating is to place first in the World Championships (a pretty lofty goal), but the game's real strength comes in the form of creating skaters and choreographing original routines. In these endeavors, you've options-a-plenty and nearly boundless combinations.

Coolest thing about creating a skater? Import a photo of your own face, so you can actually compete as yourself. Coolest thing about choreographing a routine? Download any midi file and interpret the music as you see fit.

Also, you can choose from dozens of costume styles, colors, and patterns to fashion the perfect outfit, and string together more than 40 different moves for a truly unique skating program.

As your tutor during the choreography stage, Michelle keeps you from painting yourself into a corner of the rink. She lets you know when you don't have enough space on the ice to complete a selected move, and if you don't have enough speed to perform a jump or a combo, well, those options are just plain grayed out.

If you're as eager to perform your first routine as we were, you'll want to enter a Competition right away, but you'll soon find it's a better idea to log some practice time in Just Skate mode and work out the kinks.

During your performance (Competition or Just Skate), you are responsible for nailing the jumps; this is accomplished with precision mouse clicks.

When your skater launches into a jump, the slider on the Jump Meter slides to the extreme left. As it reaches the end and quickly moves back to the right, you must click as it passes through the center of the Difficulty Gauge. The Difficulty Gauge decreases as the jump difficulty increases, and therein lays the challenge.

And, finally, it's time to compete! To enter the World Championships, you must first rise through the Regional, Sectional, and National ranks.

At each level, you're presented with the final scores of the top three competitors. Skate your routine, then watch as the judges scores come in. If you earn a spot in the top three, you advance to the next tier. Winning the Worlds requires a near perfect performance, so by the time you get to this level, you'd better be incredibly familiar with the timing of all the jumps in your routine.

Meanwhile, using the Camera utility, you can capture screenshots throughout the creative and competitive phases to compile a scrapbook of your achievements, and with the click of a mouse, it's a snap to email your scrapbook to friends around the world.

Fluid strides, graceful moves, eloquent leaps, and elegant spins: Are you ready to add these terms to your gamer's vocabulary? Michelle Kwan Figure Skating is poised to break new ground in video game competition. Don't get left out in the cold!