Kinect Sports Rivals, where do I begin? Weirdly, I was rather excited to get a hold of this and finally unleash the Kinect on a new piece of software. Alas so much has been promised through the Kinect as with most things on Xbox One and finally like a dripping tap we are starting to see these promises come forth! So will this Xbox take on the unbelievably successful Wii Sports be like the Olympics or just a school sports day?
Mapping put Kinect Sports Rivals (KSR) is easy, 6 sports comprising of Football, Tennis, Target Shooting, Rock Climbing, Bowling, Wake Racing. These accompanied by a rather childish story type thing make up KSR, basically its 3 teams Wolf, Viper and Eagle are all vying for you to join their team, it provides as a nice backdrop to the training sequence that you go through but the cut scenes are rather cringe worthy, although this will appeal to those of a younger audience!
Before you do anything in KSR though the game must create your in game character, a fantastically cinematic experience which leaves you thinking, “Am I really that fat?” A cool feature and it seems to radiate the effort that rare have put into making the game as interesting and exciting as possible. Characters can be changed, from gender to changing features if you feel the Kinect has missed off that six pack. Later on in the store you can change the outfits the virtual you is kitted out with.
Each of the sports possess’ their own redeeming qualities so that’s where we will start. Football, but no as you know it. It’s basically like foosball (Table football) with you having to distribute the ball and having a short amount of time to score before the ball is turned over to your opponent. The game mechanics work well hear and the Kinect is sensitive enough to pinpoint your power and placement providing a challenge, in some aspects however the competition lacks that cutting edge and it can become slightly dull.
Tennis, arguably the most overdone sport in the history of motion games and now KSR takes a crack at an old gaming favourite. Again the game mechanics work well and skill is actually required and rewarded in this sport within KSR, serving is accurate and the shots react well with the power, timing and direction. Competition starts out bloody awful with you wondering whether it will pick up and boy does it, soon the game goes from a local tennis club standard to Wimbledon, some players will enjoy the challenge others will find it frustrating.
Wake Racing, arguably the most frustrating thing I have ever done on any Kinect game. Competition here leaves no prisoners and I soon became utterly frustrated with the AI who were simply handing me my backside at the start. The controls are seamless at the start but in every race I took part in the Kinect for some ridiculous reason had an attack and sent me carrying off in some direction I wasn’t even attempting to go, completely ruined the experience for me. Although its worth stressing I may have just been utterly useless, most probably!
Bowling, pretty standard stuff here for anyone whose played Wii Sports. Not much you can talk about here, again the controls are great and the challenge is there to get the strikes and turkeys. Wide variety of additional items to equip makes this sport a bit more interesting, but is great fun none the less. Target Shooting. Now this I can’t get my head around, I simply don’t think it works. A game of accuracy as you’d expect the game needs you to simply point your index finger at the Kinect to aim the gun onto the targets, simple enough, the game shoots for you which seems a little simplistic. There is no real challenge and it’s a game of reactions more than accuracy at the end of the day, stealing your opponent’s targets is the most thrilling aspect of the sport which doesn’t honestly deliver.
Rock Climbing, this one I was the most worried about, looked fun, looked exciting but I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. How wrong I was, thoroughly great fun and I never got tired of playing it, as you can see from the arrangement of videos I have recorded a lot of time was spent on the rock climbing game. It just works and its so diverse presenting a different challenge everytime you play, certainly the best game of the six available.
Each game is connected to a global leaderboard which adds to the replay ability of Kinect Sports Rivals but aside from that there isn’t much else, playing online is much the same as playing against an AI just abit laggier with a better challenge depending on who you’re up against. The game rewards the player for playing individual sports through 3 ways, firstly the XP for that sport to unlock all the additional bits of kit so new balls for football or clothing for any of the sports.
Graphics wise Kinect Sports Rivals adopts a very colourful and rather hypnotic feel, it looks good and the way the graphics work with how the game has been created has shown real quality throughout. The game shows off the graphics well however they aren’t the blockbusters that we have seen from other games on the market, but that is to be expected with the type of game Kinect Sports Rivals is.
Overall Kinect Sports Rivals is an interesting and fun game to use with the Kinect, at £40 I would say this doesn’t represent value for money if you are looking for something new to try out but I would recommend if you are a fan of the previous Kinect games. Kinect Sports Rivals does a good take on the sports motion game genre that it makes me wonder how high it can reach in the future. Much fun to be had with friends, online or on your own, its certainly worth trying out.
