Kinect Sports Rivals

The single player, story mode, and challenges contain more than enough content to keep solo players occupied, the real fun is in being able to experience this game with others, where Kinect Sports Rivals shines.

Kinect Sports Rivals is a great leap forward for the series but it still shows the shortcomings of the Kinect technology. While a majority of the sports work great, such as bowling and rock climbing, others (tennis in particular) really leave a lot to be desired. I love the shift in focus to offer a more well-rounded and robust gaming experience rather than being simply a polished tech-demo. Kinect Sports is one of the most played games on my 360 and this will likely hold a similar position on the Xbox One in my household.

Kinect Sports Rivals isn’t the Kinect’s killer app, but it comes closer than anything else I’ve played. The various games, aside from soccer, feel great to play and offer more control than I expected. And even though the challenge grows in later levels, I felt like I was able to maneuver through them without fighting the controls.

Kinect Sports Rivals has an inexcusable amount of wasted space with bowling and soccer, but the other four activities are engaging, and the world is charming and appealing enough to win over most of the gamers who enjoyed Wii Sports. If you have a family who likes getting together and play games like this, go ahead and pull the trigger — all other curious parties should wait for a sale to compensate for the weak activities.

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Kinect Sports Rivals is far from the definite article that was required to show off the difference between Kinect's generations. The fact that Kinect recognises the opening and closing of your hand with startling accuracy in wake racing and rock climbing is an undoubted high point, and shows that the potential for the device is still there in spades. A lack of polish and thought in other areas throws doubt on whether that potential will truly be realised, though. The package as a whole is good enough to not be an embarrassment, but there are far too many times where the interface gets in the w...

If you're looking for a Kinect title for the entire family, or one that merely shows the benefits of next-gen hardware hold promise for motion controlled gaming, then Kinect Sports Rivals won't disappoint. If you're hoping for a sports simulator that succeeds at every turn, well... you've likely got a lot more waiting to do.

Championing mediocrity.

Wii Sports set a high bar. Combining accessibility with the novelty of motion controls, it enlivened millions of family evenings across the world. Even my house got temporarily caught up in Wii Sports-mania, thanks to my wife Ruth. No mean feat considering she couldn’t give a crap about games.

I still found there to be pretty glaring issues with the game and the Kinect 2.0 in general. When playing the game, I was constantly faced with an error that would take over the whole screen, telling me that part of my body was not completely visible. This was incredible annoying because as far as I could tell, my whole body was visible in the dialogue window. I physically cleared my whole lounge room for a few days to review this game, so to see that I was still facing these issues was just downright annoying. Loading times also seemed to plague the game at times. I found the loading times to...