Kinect’s available to buy today in the States, next week over here, which means that the embargo has gone live (this morning). If you’ve already pre-ordered or are thinking of picking up the Xbox 360’s motion control device you’ll want to know which games to pick up alongside it, right? Here’s a run-down of every title that matters so far, and what the critics think of them.
Dance Central
Dance Central is the biggie, and it’s proving very popular. With a Metacritic score of 83%, it’s apparently very good indeed. 1up praised its “bootie-bouncing material” and GameInformer says it’s good for you, too – “investing hours in a game that rewards you for some degree of athleticism and coordination is not only an incredible workout, but ultimately makes you feel like a better dancer in the end.” “It can’t actually teach you how to dance,” claim Joystiq, but “it will make you want to.” Our Kris liked it too.
Kinectimals
You’ll know Kinectimals as the game that features the fluffy tiger, kind of a gesture-controlled Tamagotchi for kids. It’s doing well on Metacritic, with 76%, and GameInformer seemed to love it. “With around 20 hours of gameplay, Kinectimals offers plenty to do,” said the site. “You can play with your cub, shop for new items, decorate your house with trinkets found on your adventure, complete challenges, have friends join in to beat your high scores, and more. If you’re looking for a rich gameplay experience jam packed with adorable creatures, look no further.”
Kinect Adventures!
Kinect Adventures is the Kinect game that, Dance Central aside, most of you will be familiar with. It’s the one with the inflatable boat add-on, you’ll remember. The Metacritic standing is currently at 65%, with Game Informer saying it’s the “perfect game for in and out party-type play” with GameTrailers saying it’s “good enough fun for a couple of nights.” The bundled game didn’t fare very well with Eurogamer, though, who said that “within a couple of weeks it will be gathering dust: another brave bundled game, first up out of the trenches, first to fall.”
Kinect Joy Ride
The game that was previously free now has Kinect support and a price tag, and the only review so far is Game Informers, locking the Metacritic percentage at 70%. The review doesn’t read like a 70% to me, mind, but it says that “in the right modes, Joy Ride pumps out excitement. In the less desirable avenues of play, it only brings frustration due to its inability to deliver a full video game racing experience.”
Kinect Sports
Rare’s Wii Sports ‘tribute’ is doing really well, with Joystiq saying the game “really demonstrates what the camera is capable when it’s used by a capable developer” and Gamespot suggesting it’s much better in multiplayer. “It doesn’t do much for solo players,” they say, “but it’s fun to play with friends both locally and online.” GameTrailers says the “package ends up feeling uninspired.” There’s no Metacritic score yet, but we’re guessing it’s going to be around 75%.
Others
Elsewhere we’ve got Ubisoft’s Your Shape (60%) and their Fighter’s Uncaged, which Eurogamer ripped to pieces with a 2/10 score. There’s also Sonic Free Riders, which has two reviews, IGN’s ‘exclusive’ 75% and Game Informer’s 58%.
There’s a few others, but it appears that the embargo was so short only the first party and key third party titles garnered much playtime, and it’s hard to attest how much time each game has got given that some outlets got their Kinect sensors this week. At the moment Kinect’s looking like having some strong titles in the mix, I’m keen to try out Dance Central at least and I’m a sucker for anything Rare do, but only time will tell whether the machine has any real potential down the line.
We’ll have our reviews and thoughts as soon as possible.
3shirts
Sounds like a decent, if not spectacular, range of reviews. I am eager to see what you guys make of it.
tonycawley
Reasonably positive start to the game reviews then. Is there no review of the actual tech anywhere? Only the games?
Raen
Eurogamer has a very complete review of the tech
Tuffcub
SO does CVG now – it boils down to “needs loads of space, great for navigating menus by voice”.
kivi95
IGN gave it 7,5/10
djhsecondnature
Engadet gave it 6/10 and CNET gave it 3.5/5, for reference.
jimmy-google
I read a few this morning, one thing has become clear. You need at least 6ft of space for 1 player and 8ft for 2 player.
There also seems to be a minimum height issue (it’s 1m so its not that bad but young kids won’t be able to play).
Lag has come up a bit and the lack or precision being picked up in games like Kinect Sports.
Most seem to see the potential but most of the positives coming from the speach recognition and the Minority Report style control. Most admit that its still far easier and quicker to use a controller or remote control.
aphex187
Young kids won’t be able to play? defo won’t be buying it then! What are MS thinking of?
cc_star
I think a child who is young enough to be under a metre tall is too young for pad based games anyway, and probably should be doing things other than playing video games so IF it genuinely doesn’t recognise a child that young, IMO thats probably a non-issue.
jimmy-google
I know a few under 1m tall who’ve had great fun with Start the Party. Kids are normally 1m tall by the age of 4 so it will only be a small amount that miss out.
bunimomike
A bit of video gaming for children under 1m tall is great fun as long as it’s not to excess. I know it’s not the end of the world as everything outside of Kinect will still do but that’s a shame as Kinect seems to come with so many caveats. :-\
Phizzy
So I suppose midgets just don’t deserve any consideration here, then? Warwick Davis could barely play this game. Think of little Willow, people!
cc_star
IF it has those caveats (which in this instance it may have I don’ know, but there’s an awful lot of shit wrote about it) and it not just a comment on in a thread which then gets replicated around the world internetz stylee
jimmy-google
He’d be fine. The review I read said “Player height matters as well, and you have to be at least a meter tall for the sensor to function properly.”
It’s a small number than may have issues. It’s probably just to cover MS’s backs.
m61726b
I was watching a staff member in Gamestation demoing Kinect and it doesn’t work that well if at all.
This could be another Microsoft BOB (look it up kids).
JaffaMan24
hmmm, not the rollocking I was expecting. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not the lame duck people have been suggesting it is.
retro_
Its a known fact that a games average drops a bit once the initial reviews are in, i.e. 80% on metacritic tends to fall around the 75% mark by the time all reviews are in. (sarcastic) I wonder why that is (/sarcastic)
Yahavage
I saw someone playing that dinghy-ride game in a local GAME shop… either it needed recalibrating (I assume you can calibrate these things?), it wasn’t working well in the (quiet) shop environment, or it just sucks. You could see a huge delay between him jumping, then the dinghy-guy jumping – like literally seconds. And then when he was trying to move left or right, nothing seemed to be happening – he seemed to spend a lot of time on the left side of the track.
Now it was a shop environment, but we had gone like 7pm at night, so there wasn’t actually anyone else in the shop, so it’s not like there was crowds of people to spoil it. Not sure what else could spoil it really. The lighting, perhaps? Either way it wasn’t a very good first impression.
nofi
Each time I’ve seen Kinect Adventures there’s been a massive delay between human and on-screen action.
retro_
I hear that the more Kinnect is actually being used, the laggier it all becomes. This is bad news for future development as games use more and more of Kinnects “power” to do cleverer stuff. Can’t wait lol!
kivi95
Will wait for thesixthaxis review because you can’t trust ign or gametrailers anymore.
Here in Sweden on a website kinect sports got 6/10,kinectimals 6/10,Kinect joy ride 2/10 and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 7/10
kivi95
oh and Kinect Adventures got 2/10
stonyk
without sounding too much like a knob I just don’t give a **** what Metacritic says. Just waiting for Sixthaxis.com review.
nofi
Do you actually understand what Metacritic is?
kjkg
I would hazard a guess at no. It’s the most “true” rating you are going to get anywhere. Except here maybe.
Stonyk, incase you don’t know, metacritic basically takes all the review scores for a game and takes an average. Don’t think metacritic actually ever reviews games itself. Might be wrong about that though.
stonyk
yes I did know this – but (and as much as it is regarded highly particularly by the publishers themselves) it reminds my a bit like rotten tomatoes for movies. Useful for info but I don’t follow this either because these reviews include some good ones, some bad ones, so rediculously overrated ones and some reduclously underrated ones. Either way it doesn’t fly with me. I prefer finding a site that has similar opinions to my own, even for film reviews. I give them all a chance until I find my most compatible one. Sixthaxis just so happens to be that one for games.
kjkg
See where your coming from, fair enough.
Guess it’s the same for all reviews. If it is your kind of game, and not the reviewer, then you are never going to agree.
After all that, I never use metacritic either :)
DJ-Katy
Two ways to look at this depending how cynical you are:
– The Kinect launch titles are significantly better than the Move launch titles
or:
– This is why you shouldn’t trust Metacritic, because we all know Kinect is an unfinished piece of suck.
Choose whichever pleases you most: they’re both valid answers lol
retro_
or:
– The initial reviews are the ones more likely to be from sites either afraid of or in Microsoft’s pockets = Higher scores.
Just watch the average % score for Kinnect games drop over time.
kevatron400
Interesting reactions from the gaming press. Better than I had expected, if I’m honest (I am). Will wait for people I know and love (you guys, of course) to tell me what they think, before I judge Kinect too harshly. All of this is probably largely irrelevant given my lack of 360 anyway.
Bilbo_bobbins
to be honest, forgetting what the reviews say etc… I’ve seen and played this in HMV in London, and I have to say, it was rubbish. There was a delay on almost everything I did, and I just felt like I couldn’t get into the game, like I wasn’t interacting with it.
I don’t know, it’s good it has some good reviews, but I fear these reviews are based on people not actually trying it, and just reading about it elsewhere.
I’m waiting for TSA to give their review….not “verdict” ;-)
nofi
I’m concerned that they’ve turned around reviews for all these games in (in some cases) 2 days.
jimmy-google
That worried me as well. I’d want at least a week with new hardware before reviewing it and probably 15 hours per game (maybe get away with 10 due to the type of game they are).