Kinect Sports is the best selling game on kinect, with good reason too. It’s accuracy in Table Tennis was outstanding, track and field was fun aswell. Although they’re my personal favourite, the response was pretty good for them all. It’s sequel has the lessons learnt.
There are different sports others prefer, but I believe the sports leave alot to be desired. I’m sure there is people who always wanted Darts, but I wouldn’t. (More on darts later) American football should work well but the fact you have 4 downs to get all the rather than 10 yards and cant defend, or even catch kicks makes it seem lacking. Theres also baseball, which is probably the worst adaptation on the game, it seems like it tries to match wii sports and then adds running. Running only happens on certain hits, and works well. Theres the occasional slide what wasn’t meant to happen, but keeps you in. The pitching is strong every so often, but it has poor patches. Many homers have been scored by kinect picking up the wrong pitch and doing their favourite kind of ball.
Skiing is a strong addition and picks up movements well, compared to the appalling Motionsports version. It just doesn’t grab me much. Theres tennis, which is strong and ridiculously accurate 90% of the time. It’s one of the only games with challenges. It doesn’t have hawk-eye and instead it’s a replay. There’s also the fact that when you win a challenge, you don’t get it back like professionals do. You also don’t win the point if it’s right. You are essentially punished for being right. Golf works great, the voice commands make it easier and controls are simple (put hand like your looking into the distance, and to look in to the distance etc.) but works well.
But the main sport I play is darts. The presentation is clean, you can move left and right to view the board differently. The controls make it easy to score, but hard to master. I play most nights and still haven’t got a 180. The suggestions help when checking out. The one thing I have to say it seems too easy to get bullseye. It’s the easiest way to checkout. I don’t know how kinect works on this one because it is to track the whole arm, and with one poor movement you could lose the match.
Kinect Sports Season 2 tries to implement voice control but it doesn’t work all that well, it heard me say “ready, hike”, and some clubs. Shouting commands to your team in American Football isn’t the most fun you win have. This game had big shoes to fill and it gets on close to filling them, but too many things are frustrating. No defence, occasional pitching errors and no reason to carry on playing some after winning all 3 difficulties. It has got fun graphics, great accuracy on golf and darts, voice controls what could be patched to work and good presentation on menus and every sport.
This game isn’t hard to recommend if you know what you’re getting. The shortage of kinect games will help this gme thrive.
Kinect Sports Season 2 gets a 8 from me.
thegamerinquest 