Kinect Adventures (Xbox 360)

Kinect Adventures is included in the bundle when you purchase a Kinect. It’s essentially a collection of mini-games, and although it boasts over 20 different games on the cover – which is technically true – really it’s five mini-games with many different difficulties and goals. I’ve been playing this all day, and it’s very easy to compare this to Wii Sports, which was a similar disc included with the Wii. Make no mistake, Kinect Adventures isn’t brilliant, it has got very little depth and you’ll get bored very, very quickly — but it’s only supposed to be a demonstration, a way for you to try out your new and rather expensive toy.

You’ll need some friends or family members to play with you to actually have any extended amount of fun. Many of the games allow multiple players to join in, and honestly it’s how the game feels like it was supposed to be played. The game constantly takes pictures of you when you’re in embarrassing positions, which it then shows you at the end of each game alongside silly captions like “High five!” when you have your hands in the air. These photos are often quite funny but they begin to feel a little stale when you’re just being seen in the same positions each time.

The first game I played was called ’20,000 Leaks’, a game where you’re inside a glass box under the sea. Your main goal is to stop the water from getting in, and you do this by plugging the holes with your various body parts; be it your head, hands, knees or feet. Naturally, the game will make you stand in awkward positions, have you hopping around the room and generally looking like a nutcase. At first you are simply being attacked by little fish, which only cause one or two holes and are easily dealt with, but you’ll end up seeing crabs which attack the bottom of your container and sharks, which cause you a vast amount of trouble. During all of this you are timed, and as the difficult ramps up and the levels progress, your time becomes quite crippling to the point where you are often finishing games with seconds to spare. 20,000 Leaks is possibly the best mini-game that Kinect Adventures has to offer; because it’s not only quite enjoyable, but it responds almost at an equal ratio to your actual movement. Unfortunately this can’t be said for the next game, Reflex Ridge.

Reflex Ridge is all about finesse, and if you’re like me, that’s probably not a good thing. The premise of this mini-game is very simple. You’re placed on a moving platform and must dodge the upcoming obstacles by either ducking, dodging or jumping. The ducking bit works fine, and is the most responsive of the lot, seeing you duck under large red obstacles to avoid getting a time penalty. The dodging and jumping bits were a little hit and miss however. I’d often jump but the Kinect wouldn’t pick it up quickly enough, resulting in me getting penalized, and it’s the same story with the dodging. What the game should have done is maybe give you an on screen prompt when to move, because it clearly isn’t 1:1 movement that is occurring on screen and it becomes really frustrating.

The next game on the list is River Rush which sees you on a raft going down a fast, wild and strangely structured river. You control your raft by stepping left or right and you can also jump to get some extra air coming off ramps. Your goal for this mini-game is to collect ‘Adventure Pins’ which are scattered throughout the course, both on the river itself and in the air, only reachable by taking a ramp and jumping at the correct moment. You can also get points for steering your raft through checkpoints, some of which are not always stationary and getting through them can be very difficult as the Kinect, once again, isn’t very responsive when you need it to be.

The penultimate mini-game, Rally Ball, is the first game Microsoft let the press see when it was first showing its new piece of hardware out. I’d liken it to a weird human version of Breakout, as your character is displayed on screen and you must bounce the balls to the other end of the court using only your body. What seems easy at first quickly ramps up the difficulty when you hit ‘multi-ball’ pins, which as their name suggests, throws a plethora of balls in your direction, making things very hectic indeed. You’re not punished very much for letting a ball pass you, instead you simply have to wait a second or two for a new ball to pop up, allowing you to whack it down the course with a little more caution. This game is fun, and your movements are matched pretty accurately during a match, but it can too often just be a case of you whaling your arms and legs frantically because there are way too many balls and not enough reaction time to accurately hit them all back.

Finally you have Space Pop, a name which should give you a general idea of what it consists of. You’re in a spaceship, surrounded by tubes that shoot out bubbles in various patterns in both the foreground and background. Your job is to flap your arms to float around and pop as many bubbles as you possible can – and that’s really all there is to it.

You can play the games in any order you want, and at any time you want, just by selecting free-play on the main menu. For the more adventurous gamer, you may wish to try the so-called ‘Adventure’ mode, which plops you in a rather weak story, completing the mini-games under varying conditions. Said conditions can range from completing the games under an extreme time-trial mode, or collecting a certain amount of adventure pins over a number of stages. As you complete the challenges set upon you, you’ll fill out adventure badges which are basically a progress marker which signify how close you are to getting your next reward. Rewards range from avatar items and achievements. At the end of every stage you can perform a dance or song with your newly found treasure – something which you should resist if you wish to keep any of your remaining dignity.

Presentation

Kinect Adventures often looks really great, full of bright colours and fancy avatar animations - but it's not without its issues. The problems hit during gameplay itself, when the game stuggles to process both your movements and the game visuals at the same time. The worst victim of said issues is River Rush, as the beautifully crafted world and water effects are often bought to their knees by terrible frame rates which are by no means a rarity.

Conclusion

As a technical showcase of the Kinect, the game does it as much justice as it does damage. The games that work are great fun to play, and the games that are flawed can really damage your overall experience, possibly causing you to question if the money was worth it in the first place. There just isn’t enough content here to keep people coming back, and although it may be great for the first day, it’ll quickly find its way to the back of your gaming collection and more than likely be left there for good.