Family Game Night 4: The Game Show Detailed

Kinect enabled family fun

The Hasbro Family Game Night series has been heading further away from traditional board games with each new instalment. Hasbro Family Game Night 2 included Bop It!, although this was never released on the Xbox 360. Hasbro Family Game Night 3 saw the inclusion of Twister, but unfortunately arrived one month too early for Kinect compatibility. It should be of no surprise then that the newly announced Family Game Night 4: The Game Show will have full Kinect compatibility.

The game is based on the Family Game Night show that airs on The Hub television network, and will come with six activities:

• Connect 4 Basketball: the winner is the first team to shoot four balls in a row of one colour
• Scrabble Flash: re-arrange tiles to make words - the longer the word, the higher the score
• Sorry! Sliders: achieve a bulls-eye or block your opponents with enormous game pieces
• Bop-It Boptigon: perform the right movement at the right time at an ever increasing pace
• Yahtzee! Bowling: roll giant bowling balls towards the pins for scoring combinations
• Monopoly Crazy Cash Machine: large prizes for the family who emerges triumphant

The gameplay can accommodate two players individually or simultaneously, and offers avatar integration. Players can also customise the length of the game show or set different rules.

Family Game Night 4: The Game Show is due to be released in Autumn / Fall 2011.

Otilia e Gabita said:As a Kinect owner, I find it perfectly adequate for the games that I have played so far. I have absolutely no issue with it not recognising what I'm doing at any time.

Like games that use normal controls, some have better systems than others; you can't just tar all of the Kinect games with the same brush. The body tracking on Dance Central is amazing, but is absolutely awful on Sonic Riders. It really depends on the competence of the developer, and not the fact that it's using Kinect.

Otilia e Gabita said:That's fair enough (but you're a horrible cynic ).

I have to admit that I hope that there's a demo for it so that I can try it out for myself. Although the game sounds fun, if there's any hint of the motion tracking not being too reliable then I'm not going to be purchasing the game. Unfortunately, some developers haven't got body tracking quite right yet and there are too many games that sounded good, but have disappointed on release (Sonic Free Riders, Body & Brain Connection etc).