With a somewhat mediocre line-up of games launching alongside Microsoft's Kinect sensor last year, while we thought the standout game was Kinectimals, one of the best selling titles of the launch was Wii Sports knock-off Kinect Sports, with some three million copies worldwide. As Microsoft's attempt at showing anything you can do with a controller will inevitably be more fun without one, Kinect Sports was pretty much guaranteed to receive its very own sequel this year, with a whole host of new sports, challenges, and tweaks to boot. But can it finally dethrone Wii Sports Resort as the king of party sports?
The choice of sports, at least, seems a lot more sensible this year. Leaving behind the strange, flaw highlighting games like hurdles, which required you to jump well before your avatar even got close to them, there's much more of a mix in Season Two, with some familiar favourites being "borrowed" from games like Wii Sports, presumably for the aforementioned reasons. The sports this year consist of Golf, Tennis, Baseball (see what we mean?), Skiing, Darts, and American Football - a much more varied mix than in the previous game, each of which can be played either in normal, vanilla mode, or in one of a variety of little challenge modes, which tweak the basic formula somewhat, to help keep things fresh. Asking you, for example, to clonk mascots with tennis balls, the challenges are a nice distraction from the main game modes - and there's plenty here to keep you going.
Downhill skiing - much safer on Kinect than in real life.
One of the standout games here is actually skiing, as it's plays to Kinect's strengths rather than its weaknesses. Bombing down a hill at speed, all you have to do is lean from side to side, to steer your avatar through the various gates, taking time out to jump as you approach the flashing green markers that warn you of a ramp. It's simple enough, but it's fun, because Kinect can cope with it - there's no need for precision of the sort Kinect doesn't seem to handle. With a variety of tracks on offer, this is one of the better modes.
American Football, on the other hand, is not. You always tend to find that minigame collections lend themselves well to games that are intrinsically simple to understand - not like American Football. Luckily, there's a several minute long intro video here that explains the rules and objectives of the game for the uninitiated (most of the UK and European population, we'd imagine), but as the game itself is so complex, it doesn't work all that well in the game. As the linebacker, you'll have to crouch down behind the row of players, before calling for the ball (using voice commands), or simply standing up, at which point, your players will begin their run down the pitch. A little icon above their head turns green when they can receive the ball, at which point you chuck it, and hope Kinect realises which player you wanted to send it to (which in our experience, it didn't). If the player receives the ball, it's then up to you to go back to the Kinect Sports favourite of exaggerated running on the spot - although again, it doesn't seem to make too much difference - you're usually tackled within a few seconds, as your player fails to run with anywhere near the speed you're wearing through your carpet with.
Darts, meanwhile, is a similarly odd one, as it's a game that requires a lot of precision - which Kinect usually struggles with, although things have been simplified a bit here to make it that little bit easier. Holding your hand up as though you're throwing a real dart, moving your hand around will move a cursor around on screen - pull back to ready your throw, and the reticule will get smaller and more precise, showing you where your dart should land. We say should, because a lot depends on the quality of your throw (or rather, what Kinect thinks the quality of your throw is) - and while some of our test subjects had no problems getting to grips with this, for others, Kinect seemed to have real problems tracking them, leading to them aiming for the bullseye and ending up missing the board. Younger children, especially, may have trouble with the precision required here from throwing, especially if they're smaller, as they'll be aiming upwards.
One hundred and eighty!
Tennis and Baseball are two more of the games that have been borrowed from Wii Sports, but again, neither of them play as well as they do with a Wii Remote. Based more around timing than anything else, you'll have to swing your imaginary racket/bat (again, it feels rather odd to begin with, especially if you're used to the Wii games) to return the ball, but you have next to no control over where it goes. And while that means at least you'll usually manage to return the ball, it also means you'll end up serving it straight to your opponent in tennis, or straight to a fielding player in Baseball. There does seem to be some flexibility in Tennis - hitting the ball late sends it off to the right, and hitting it early send it to the left, but it doesn't make as much of a difference as it really should do.
Last but not least is Golf, which again loses something through not having you holding something in lieu of a golf club - and is also something of a mixed bag. For us, Golf has been something of a fifty fifty. Sometimes, it picks us up fine, with no trouble at all, and we'll be swinging for the fairways with reckless abandon, with Kinect doing a decent job of tracking how much power you hit the ball with - but other times, Kinect gets completely confused, to the point it actually prevents us from taking a shot. Go to swing back, and when it's having this strange fit, Kinect will decide it can only see one arm, which also happens to be the sign for practice mode, which means the next shot you make doesn't count. Hold it there for a second, and it'll switch between practice mode and a normal shot. Perhaps if practice mode was activated with a different gesture, there'd be no problem. Putting is similarly difficult (although this was a problem on Wii Sports, too), with your ball often either falling just short, or going miles past - although we're equally rubbish at putting in real life, so that could just be the game being too accurate for its own good.
But part of the problem with Kinect Sports Season Two is, by going for sports that are so similar to those found in Wii Sports (in fact, three of them are found on the original Wii Sports, which comes free with every Wii), Microsoft have left themselves open to uncomfortable comparisons that don't exactly show Kinect off in the greatest of lights. Golf, for example, works so well on the Wii because you're holding something in your hand - you can see exactly the angle you're holding the controller at, and you know the console knows that too. Baseball and tennis have a similar level of reliability, purely because you're holding a controller. With Kinect Sports: Season Two, you've got to attempt to position your whole body in such a way that it can recognise how you're holding the golf club, rather than just holding the controller itself however you want to - and it doesn't always work.
You can hold your hand to your head to view the hole. We had real trouble getting this to work.
If you haven't got a Wii and are looking for a collection of sporting minigames, we'd probably suggest Kinect Sports: Season Two over the original, although it's a fairly close cut contest. There's still fun to be had, if you have enough room for it, (like all Kinect games, you're looking at a minimum of six feet of interrupted space between you and your TV - more like eight to ten to be comfortable), but a lot depends on you, and your family, and how well you get on with the at times temperamental Kinect. If you already have a Wii and Wii Sports, or Wii Sports Resort, however, you may be disappointed with the selection of games on offer here, as bar the fancier graphics, you've probably already got the better version.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
