14 DAY TRIAL // The Olympic doodles have been fairly predictable so far. The day's main event, in the eyes of Google, was celebrated with a cartoony depiction. There was an Easter Egg in yesterday's javelin doodle, a cameo by the Curiosity Mars rover, but nothing out of the ordinary except that.
Until today that is, when Google is running the first interactive doodle for the 2012 London Olympics. It's a 100m hurdles game, the goal is to get to the finish line as fast as possible.
You do this by pressing the forward and backward arrow keys in sequence as fast as possible and jumping over the hurdles by pressing space.
It's not as easy as it sounds, especially if you're aiming for the gold. Well, for three stars, as you don't get medals for your time. Given the amount of censorship and the heavy-handed approach of the IOC concerning these things, that's hardly surprising.
Connoisseur gamers will also notice a less than coincidental resemblance to another 100m hurdles game, the famous QWOP, "the hardest game ever created." If you feel the Google doodle is too easy for you, try QWOP a couple of times and you'll be begging for mercy.
The opening ceremony doodle depicted a runner, dressed in red, just like the one in today's game. At the time, some thought that it was a reference to QWOP. However, Google said it was just a coincidence.
It doesn't seem that much of a coincidence now as Google's doodle seems very much inspired by QWOP, even though there are plenty of clear differences between the two games.
Google has been running a series of doodles since the Olympics started. You can check out a roundup of all the doodles from the first 10 days of the games here.
UPDATE: The doodle works with a gamepad as well, as long as you're using a browser that supports it like Google Chrome and experimental Firefox builds.
