Normally whenever you get something for “free with purchase” it’s not worth the space it takes up. Video games however have always been the exception. Nintendo started off with Super Mario and Duck Hunt, which to this day is still one of the best games of all time. Then all of a sudden when the fifth generation systems (Like Sony’s first ever try in consoles Playstation) came out, pack in games were no more. Maybe it was greed by the console companies, maybe it was that we were willing to pay for it anyway, but the world may never know. Then Nintendo changes the rules back and bundles Wii Sports, still one of the consoles most popular games. PS Move comes with a bunch of demos and Kinect comes with Kinect Adventures.
At first glance Adventures seems like a bunch of childish mini-games with no depth making you jump and lean like the typical motion games. Come to find out that’s just level one. Increasingly difficult levels make you jump, lean, twist, turn, kneel, bend, and basically contort yourself to every position possible.
Your first game is Rally Ball, and you’re using your body to bounce balls against a big wall. Imagine a top down view of Breakout, except you’re the little strait line. Power-ups include
Your second game is called River Rush, alone or with the help of a friend your goal is to pilot an inflatable raft down the longest series of rapids ever made. Leaning left and right you steer your surprisingly responsive raft trying to capture coins and taking the occasional photo. Once you’ve mastered the 30 seconds of leaning it’s time to jump over rocks shaped ramps. No big deal so far, I can handle some leaning and jumping.
Now comes the hardest mini-game, Reflex Ridge. Your wooden platform roller coaster goes up and down a series of gates forcing you to jump, duck, and stretch out in what seems like demonic insane yoga positions. Right now it’s become fairly obvious that not only am I incredibly out of shape, my flexibility is poor at best.
Now incredibly out of breath my Xbox suggests I take a break, so I take the few minutes of mercy from my cruel master. My favorite mini-game 20,000 leaks is up. The basic premise of this is you’re in a glass box underwater and fish are attacking your not that thick glass. Using your hands and feet you have to cover up the holes for 3 seconds any way you can. It sounds dumb and looking at the pictures in the end it looks even dumber.
Now is a good time to bring up the pictures for Kinect. Every game takes pictures or videos of you doing stupid moves and decides to create a caption for it. I have had such awesome captions as “Dancing Queen” and “Look Ma’ I Can Fly!” This feature is great if you have no modesty in your gaming experience. And hopefully alone.
The last and my least favorite game is Space Pop. In Space Pop, transparent balls (soap bubbles) shuttle between holes on the walls, floors and ceilings of a virtual zero-gravity room. The player attempts to pop the bubbles by touching them to earn Adventure pins. Space Pop utilizes depth, requiring the player to move toward and away from the sensor. To move upwards, the player can flap his or her arms, and to stay at current height, hold arms out to the sides. In a small room like mine that barely fits the minimum requirements it’s just too much going on for me to run forward, back and side to side. I feel that since it comes with the Kinect it’s pointless to recommend it but if I had to purchase it, it would be worth buying.
And that’s how this gamer sees it.
-Pimpnelli
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