In the Olympic Mode, the player selects an event and competes in order to win the gold medal.

The reviewer argued that while the game has substantial flaws, such as lack of a practice mode and difficulty select and the passive controls of some of the events, the fun of the multiplayer competition makes it a good value.

The graphics and sound are great, and about half of the events are dead on, but the rest rarely rise above mediocrity.

The most commonly cited problem, regardless of the reviewer's overall opinion of the game, is that the controls for many of the events are so simplistic that the player feels no connection to the action occurring onscreen.

[18] Crispin Boyer wrote in Electronic Gaming Monthly that "Most of NWO '98's 12 difficult events are neither fun nor exciting, and much of the blame falls on the uninspired control setups.