Kinect Sports 2 Review
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Delevolpers: Rare Ltd
Platform Xbox 360 Kinnect
Released Oct 25th 2011
The Kinnect has been suffering from a lack of “must have” games. Can the latest sports title change that? Short answer? No, but its far from a bad game either.
The last incarnation of the game, Kinect Sports was a fun title that was easy for the whole family to play, so now Rage and Microsoft studios have upped the ante with different sports and massively improved responsivity with the Kinect controls. The new sports included this time around are Tennis, American Football, Golf, Darts and Downhill Skiing.
The graphics are still cartoony but they do look polished and most importantly, your avatar moves in tandem with your actual movements in most events. The menu screen have the added functionality of voice activation so to navigate your way through the menus, you simply need to say what sport you want to play. It’s a nice touch. Add into that the fact that each tutorial and intro is easy to follow and voiced by the inimitable Peter Dickson (from Xfactor) and you have a game that is not lacking on the presentation front.
So how do the actal events bear up?
Over on this side of the Atlantic, American Football doens’t get the same amount of love as a lot of sports but it is a fun addition here. You control the quarterback and must crouch and shout “HIKE” to receive the ball. This will start a play in which the receivers make their runs. An icon above their heads turn green and you choose which one to throw it to. If you are accurate enough, your receiver will catch it and then it is up to you to run on the spot like a lunatic to try and run to the end-zone and avoid tackles. Avoiding the tackles seems to be achieved randomly and that does take away from some of the enjoyment but overall, American Football is an enojoyable and impressive event.
Downhill Skiing is probably the most family friendly sport on Kinect Sports this time around. Basically, all you are required to do is lean left and right to sucessfully negotiate the courses and ensure that you pass through the gates. Every now and again you need to jump at specific points and at first it is fun, but quickly becomes irritating as the difficulty increases.
My personal favourite is the Darts. Some people will either love it or hate it but aybe it is because it is the only sport I can envisage my ever-aging and cigarette and alcohol infused body being able to perform in the real world. There are no shocks and surprises as to the game mechanics in this one. You stand in front of the Kinect and act as if you are throwing a dart. It manages to register your movements with extreme accuracy and while it is easy to hit a twenty, achieving the trebles and doubles actually feels like an achievement. Having said that, the girlfriend found it to be a little unresponsive but I like to think that it is only because I am incredibly talented rather than face the harsh reality that I may be just lucky.
Baseball is just as responsive as you would hope. Stepping forward whilest swinging improves the power and you are able to control which area of the field that your ball is hit towards. Make a less than stellar hit and you are required to sprint on the spot to get to first base and stick a leg out to slide to avoid being called out. Fielding is a little bit easier and is, if anything, to easy to control. To throw a straight ball, you simply throw in a straight line. For a curve ball, you throw across your body. Catching a fly ball is incredibly simple and you just need to put your hand over an icon that appears on the screen. Overall, I found baseball to be a little lacking but inoffensive.
Golf is where the game truely shines. Hitting a massive drive or chipping a delicate ball onto the green is done purely by the way in which you swing your imaginary club. It takes a little getting used to, but once you have mastered it, it becomes second nature. There are also a couple of nice touches which make the game even better. You can use your voice commands to change your club and to view the green, you just raise your hand to your eyes as if you were looking into the distance. Completely unneccasary additions, but fun nonetheless. The quality of the movement detection is amazing and I can see this tech being used in future Tiger Woods titles.
Tennis is the one truely ugly event in this years title. It seems sluggish and unresponsive and most of the time, you feel that you aren’t making contact with the ball or even in control of your avatar. It is a shame seeing that Tennis on the Wii was one of its crowning glories and you would have thought that Rage and Microsoft would have tried to serve (pun intended) us up something special. It does smack of lazy programming and feels out of place when compared to the quality of the likes of the golf and darts events.
This is pretty much a party title. While the single player is fun up to a point, the true selling point is the fact that it is so much more fun when playing someone either locally or over Xbox Live. There is an addition of challenge modes, where you can issue a challenge to someone over Xbox live to beat your score/time in each event which will have you coming back time and again if you have an uber-competative streak like me. There is a somewhat steep learning curve too. The Rookie difficulty is easily beatable but when you progress to Pro, it does become a lot more challenging.
There are a couple of throwaway minigames included this year; A field goal kicking event in American Football, an accuracy challenge in Golf, a dart bursting challenge in Darts, a target challenge in Tennis and a Home Run Derby in Baseball. They are what they are, simple minigames that offer a little change in pace and does add to the replability factor of Kinect Sports Season 2.
Overall: This is not by any means a bad title. It is a marked improvement on its predecessor and shows that there is still a lot more to come from the Kinect, although it still needs to come a long way before we can call it a “must-have”. But if you are looking for a fun game that you can play with your family over the festive period and show off your Kinect, you could do a lot worse than picking up this game.
SCORE : 7/10
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