It almost seems strange to think that Kinect Joy Ride initially started out as a game without Kinect's involvement at all. Originally conceived as a free to download Xbox Live Arcade game, that would have seen you buying extra levels, modes, and cars if you wanted to play more, it seems that somewhere along the way, Microsoft came along and changed their minds, opting instead to launch Joy Ride as Kinect's first racing title.
For a game that surely must have undergone a rapid transformation during the later stage of its development, Kinect Joy Ride actually feels like a surprisingly accomplished game. With a wide range of modes on offer, giving you plenty of things to do other than the standard races, Kinect Joy Ride certainly isn't lacking in content.
We wouldn't advise doing this while you're driving...
As with any new hardware, there was always going to be a learning curve with Kinect, as developers felt their way around, trying to work out how to best utilise something that's so different to anything that's come before. And initially, BigPark seem to have done pretty well on Kinect Joy Ride. Holding your arms out in front of you like you were clutching an imaginary steering wheel, you turn, as you would in real life, to make your car steer right and left, lean into the corners if you want to drift, and pull your arms back towards your chest, before pushing them forwards in order to boost. With braking and accelerating controlled for you, it's so far, so simple - but unfortunately, like a lot of other Kinect games, Joy Ride really suffers from the lack of any tactile response.
Although you may know what angle you're holding your arms at, it's always nice to be able to see if Kinect agrees - but instead, in Kinect Joy Ride, if you try and turn a little bit to the left, there's no way of knowing if your movement was too subtle for Kinect to pick up. We mentioned when we played the game in August that we hoped they'd add a picture of a steering wheel, or something, to the screen, just to show you what the camera's seeing, and how that translates into the game, giving you that important level of feedback, but sadly, there's no such luck.
What it means is that the controls mostly feel a strange mixture of loose, and jumpy. Small movements don't really get picked up, and when they do, they're translated into huge swerves on the screen, which may frustrate younger gamers. Likewise, although you'll often lean into corners naturally while you're playing the game, all it means in the game is you'll often end up drifting unintentionally - and making any adjustments to your path while you're mid-drift is nigh on impossible.
There's a wide range of cars to unlock - and you can even paint them yourself, by holding something up to the camera. Even this is a faff though, as you try to hold something up, get too close, and the camera loses you...
But thankfully, Kinect Joy Ride really starts to pick up when you venture into the other modes. Battle Race and Pro Race are standard eight car races, one with and one without weapons, respectively, that see you careering around a variety of nicely themed tracks. Seemingly as a concession to the controls being a bit inaccurate, each track's also packed with a load of shortcuts and boost pads that mean, even if you end up going the wrong way, you'll usually end up back on the right track pretty quickly.
Stunt mode is an interesting one, and also one of the more fun to play, simply because it doesn't require you to be that precise. Putting your car on a giant half pipe, with plates of glass, random fruit (who knows...), and other power ups littering the air, all you have to do is boost at the bottom, with the intention of throwing your car as high as you can up the other side.
Slightly more disappointing is the Smash mode, which gives you points for, well, smashing things. The only problem is, driving over the objects normally will hardly net you any points at all - if you want to earn the big bucks, you've got to drift across the objects, which is surprisingly tricky to do. All it usually means is you'll end up spending most of the mode simply skidding around the same circle, taking out one or two extra objects on each pass.
Stunt mode in all its glory - fun, but the points requirements for the higher levels make you wonder why you bother.
Dash mode, too, is something of a pointless inclusion, as you simply have to get from one end of a pretty straight piece of track to another in the shortest time possible. Various signs and objects get in your way on the track, so you'll have to swerve from side to side crazily if you want to get a good time. The only problem is, if you're charging your boost (which you'll have to do if you want to get to the finish quickly), you won't be able to steer, as with your hands up at your chest, the sensor won't pick up your invisible steering wheel, so you're left torn between either not boosting, and not crashing, or simply boosting through everything that stands in your way. We chose the latter.
Rounding off the selection of modes is the weird, yet oddly entertaining Trick mode. Nothing to do with cars at all, in Trick mode, you simply stand on the, er, wing of your car, and, in a similar fashion to Just Dance, match the poses that appear on screen. While it often feels like it's asking you to be a tad too precise, this is actually one of the most enjoyable modes in Joy Ride - even though it doesn't require any driving.
Through playing the various modes, regardless of where you finish in each event, you'll earn fans, which in turn unlock new tracks, cars, and events for you to compete in. And in all honesty, it's a good job you'll still earn fans even if you come last, because the imprecision of the controls makes it flipping hard to win. Bouncing off walls for most of the race is not conducive to winning races, and the computer players have an uncanny ability for staying bunched together, right next to you, meaning one mistake near the end of the race often spells disaster. Perform well in a race, and you'll be awarded with a medal - but it's something of a glaring oversight that the end of race screen doesn't tell you how many points you've got to get to earn the next medal up, leaving you with no incentive to retry, or improve.
Overall, although Kinect Joy Ride does suffer from some less-responsive-than-we'd-hope controls, it can still be quite fun, when everything's going right. The only problem is, like many other Kinect games that aren't based explicitly around tracking your whole body, we can't help but feel that we'd be having more fun with a controller - even if it was a motion sensing one.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
