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Kinect Adventures - River Rush 1st attempt (720p HD)
Kinect Adventures
is a compilation of five titles on a disc which comes with Microsoft's new Kinect advice, which aims to trump
anything the Nintendo Wii and Sony's Playstation Move devices, both of which require you to hold at least one
form of remote to control it, by allowing your whole body to become the controller.
After setting up and calibrating the Kinect to recognise your movements and voice, the effect of which you can
see in the videos linked to this review, you're ready to play the games. Rather than discuss the finer aspects
of the device at the top, here, I'll talk about it as I go through the games.
They begin with Rallyball, which involves 'throwing' balls at a wall of boxes, some of which will
reveal more balls and if you can keep them all going at once (and you'll see from the footage that I can't!),
then you'll clear the wall quickly, resulting in a higher score. For each game in this package, there are
Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels to get through and in order to complete them, you will respectively
have bronze, silver and gold medals awarded to you. However, even if you, say, manage silver in a bronze event,
you can't skip the intermediate one later, which is a pain... well, if you're sticking to the 'Adventure mode'.
There is a 'Free play' mode which does allow you to play the more difficult ones if you prefer. A 'Timed-play'
mode is also available for Rally Ball, Reflex Ridge and River Rush where the ability to score points is replaced
by the ability to get extra time to continue the game.
There's also an option to "Show off and share" which, as you'll see from the game, allows you to upload pictures
taken randomly during the game to be uploaded to Microsoft's site for this, as well as "Living Statues" (see the
second Rally Ball video for more on that). To be honest, I never went to the site afterwards to see how they
looked (I see enough of myself in the mirror every morning), and they only stay up on there for 14 days so it's
very much a transient extra.
Kinect Adventures - Reflex Ridge (720p HD)
Next up is one of my favourite games of the bunch, River Rush, which places you in a rubber dinghy and
then takes you through a course of avoiding obstacles and collecting tokens along the way. The more you collect,
the higher the score. This is one of the easier games to play in the package as it doesn't require you to jump
as much as I thought it would and simple gestures to the side will move you across the screen. After that, it's
a case of "practice makes perfect".
After that came one of the most annoying games on show - 20,000 Leaks. Basically, you're in an underground
tank and, for lack of any particular reason, every kind of undersea creature wants you dead and will cause leaks
in your enclosure by ramming it. The water effects are lovely, but less so is having to move all around to stop the
leaks in front of you, to the left and right and also beneath your feet. One of the reasons this game got on my
nerves after a while is that, as it shows in the footage, it lost me on occasion.
Basically, I don't have a perfect room for this and there was a piece of furniture I couldn't shift out of
the way completely, hence the problems. Even if I could, the game does get a little tedious before too long and
it's not one I'd want to repeat too often. That aside, for those who do have plenty of space, there are some games
which can be controlled by two players simultaneously.
Game no.4 is Reflex Ridge, an on-the-rails title that, like River Rush, simply requires you to
move about to avoid obstacles as well as stretching about to collect as many tokens as possible, even though you
really cannot pick up every last one. You can jump to go a bit faster, but as with River Rush, it's the
colourful and crisp outdoor visuals that give you a great sense of space and make you feel like you're achieving
something.
Kinect - setting up and calibration (720p HD)
The final game is Space Pop, a title which, like 20,000 Leaks, places you an an underwater room
of sorts, this time allowing you to float about in full 3D space in order to burst as many bubbles as possible.
Again, I had a few problems getting around the room completely but I really was quite blown away as to how well
it keeps up with all your movements, not only in general, but from the third dimension point of view. That's not
something I was expecting from the Kinect and, while I cannot comment on the PS3 Move - as I've never used it,
it really does wipe the floor with the Nintendo Wii.
In summary, using your hands to move things about with the Kinect is very
"Minority Report",
something that equally blew me away when I saw it at the cinema back in 2002 and never really expected to be able
to do the same thing in my own home at any point, so the fact I can indeed do that is, simply, cool as fuck.
I had heard about a very slight delay between your actions and what appears onscreen but there's nothing like
what I'd feared and, really, there's nothing to worry about on that score. It's a very slight delay, but you can
soon get into the game and make any compensation necessary.
If I had any complaint about this title, it's that basically, they are like a lot of mini games. However,
while the Kinect Adventures games are a little bit lacking, they show that the device is capable of
amazing things and I can't wait to try more titles. I predict great things for the Microsoft Kinect.
In this review, I've uploaded a number of clips which are as follows:
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
