| Author | Review |
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Twinkling82
70,323
TA Score for this game: 162
Posted on 29 October 11 at 17:13 |
This review has 23 positive votes and 5 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
This review was originally posted on my website, http://gamingirl.com
We’ve had our hands on the sequel to Kinect Sports, and it sure was fun to try out with a couple nice people in a friendly competition.
Season Two have the same graphics, the same sounds, the same way of playing. They basically kept what was good and refined the gameplay with enhanced movements, better steering and more complex games.
Add six new sports to your library
I was surprised to see American Football in there, and boy it was exhausting to play – a really good workout. With running, stepping to the side and throwing the ball in a lenghty game, most people will at least be able to feel the workout. With four downs to get to the opponents end zone for a touchdown and no extra downs if you gain 10 yards, the game aren’t following the official rules fully. With no defensive play, you can only hope that the opponent won’t score enough points to gain in on your score.
Dart seems to be more true to the original game, with 310 points going down. Score points by throwing darts and hitting the big targets and finish off by hitting a double-point to reach zero. The game offers an assistant, to tell you which target is worth going for. You can turn this off though, and I advise you to do this, unless you’re horrible at math and can’t put two and two together. It is incredibly difficult to aim – more about that in the critique section later in the review.
As with the football event, the Baseball minigame is a very simplistic representation of the real thing. It’s basically just a gameplay comprised of hit’n’run’n’throw’n’catch. But that’s what we would expect from a minigame with a baseball theme, isn’t it? Even though baseball is a sport that is non-existent in my country, I still know a thing or two and I can still enjoy the minigame, nonetheless. You play two innings, once as a hitter and once as a pitcher, in each inning. It doesn’t sound like much, but it seems fitting in a minigame like this., you would grow bored with a full fletched 9 inning game.
The Skiing is pretty fun. Going down the slope you’ll have to go through the slalom gates to avoid a time penalty by leaning to either side, all while making jumps and proceeding with a certain speed that’ll secure you first place by standing . The overall winner after two rounds gets the cake. Even though there is no cake. In the game, that is. I’ll refrain from coming with a Portal reference here, so just go out into your kitchen and make your own cake.
We only tried Golf and Tennis very quickly, but they work as you’d expect from a Kinect game. Swing your arm to hit the ball in tennis, stand sideways in golf and step to the side to aim in the right direction – and remember to swing both your arms in the right speed to get the ball to the green.
Virtual worlds are bound to include some fantasy, and Kinect Sports Season Two does just that with their including of Special Events. In skiing there’s Downhill Dodge, in golf there’s Ocean Driver and Dart has a pop version, just in case you want a more festive experience.
Encountering problems
Dart works great most of the time, it is absolutely horrible at other times. You have to imitate holding a dart in your hand, as you would if you were playing the real thing. And then you have to aim the little crosshair over the desired target. Often, that would be the triple-twenty target, until your score is low enough to go for the win. This actually work great, but when your crosshair is lined up perfectly, you have to pull your arm back and prepare the throw. A lot of times, the Kinect sensor simply reads your motion as a wrong input, and moves the crosshair instead, which requires you to reset and aim the crosshair back to the desired target. This gets frustratingly old, when it happens four, seven or even ten times in a row. But when it works, it’s actually pretty fun, and you convince yourself that it’s pretty entertaining. But that feeling only lasts until the next time the crosshair flies all over the place.
Even if your game library already contain the first Kinect Sports, unless you don’t play it, I highly recommend that buy the second season. With six new sports to play and refined Kinect movements, it’s worth the buy. It’s fun at parties with friends and family, just make sure to have enough space and no fragile things nearby.
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CheneyHeadshot
167,467
TA Score for this game: 957
Posted on 05 January 12 at 13:24, Edited on 30 January 12 at 13:29 |
This review has 11 positive votes and 1 negative vote. Please log in to vote. |
Those of you familiar with the first Kinect Sports game will know what to expect from Season 2. That being a seemingly disparate collection of sports that seem to be randomly picked but are in fact well chosen simulacra of the pursuits in question. Replacing football, bowling, beach volleyball and the other three sports are American football, skiing, darts, golf, tennis and baseball. The latter three could probably have been included in the first game but for the fact Rare obviously made a conscious decision not to blatantly copy Wii Sports.
The usual daft extra minigames are included from the off this time, rather than as free DLC. For example, darts has a genius balloon popping mode and gridiron has a field goal challenge.
You can also control menus and aspects of the game via voice recognition that exhorts you to "say what you see!" although this is a bit hit and miss at the best of times.
On to the the sports themselves then.
American Football is a well rounded approximation of the game, although you can only pick passing plays. You only get four downs to go the length of the field so Madden it ain't. However you'll find yourself throwing beautiful rainbows like Drew Brees to Marques Colston and depending on the AI difficulty almost always scoring on your posession, be it a field goal or a touchdown.
There's achievements for scoring on a kick return or on the first attempt as well as calling an audible and executing it successfully. You hunch down to start a play off and can either hike the ball by shouting it or standing up (my preferred option), then you have a short while to choose your receiver and pass the ball his way. This is where the game falls down a bit. Your open receivers have a green indicator next to them so you know where to throw but the game doesn't seem able to accurately figure out which receiver the ball is going too. This might be as a result of my noodle arm (think colossal draft bust Ryan Leaf) or crap coding. Given how accessible the game has been made I'm veering towards the latter option. Maybe if I had a huge warehouse flat as my playing space it'd be better, but in the real world where you have a couch in the same room it's not so great. Also, juking defenders seems a bit difficult although that'll probably come with practice. I guess I need to brush up on my Timewarp skills ("it's just a jump to the left!").
Skiing was the sport I was most sceptical about when I heard of its inclusion in this game, though thankfully my fears have been annulled by another accomplished effort. You do two runs on a downhill course, strictly on rails. The only wrinkles being the gates you have to navigate and the occasional jumps you'll need to clear to get a good time. You lean left or right to get through gates and go into a tuck to gain speed as you go down the hill. Although to get the perfect run achievements there's absolutely nothing to stop you standing bolt upright to keep your speed down and guarantee a clear run. I've never skied in my life and I imagine I probably never will, but if it's as fun as this I can see part of the appeal. Only you stand less chance of breaking a limb in your living room.
Darts was another I thought seemed like a crap idea, but thankfully it's a far better attempt at the working man's sport of choice than the horrific PDC World Championship Darts some of you may have encountered. Saying that though, this is probably the hardest game of all of those on offer in this package although on Novice level you'll witness some of the most blatant rubberbanding ever seen as your AI opponent does everything to lose the match.With regard to the difficulty, the main problem being aiming accurately coupled with imprecise detection on when you're drawing your hand back to throw a dart. Once you nail the throwing action you should be ok. The achievements aren't unlike those seen in PDC Darts, get a 180, have a nine dart finish etc. That said, I think this'll be the game mode I'll return to again and again as it doesn't require jumping around like an idiot to play it, just a steady hand.
Tennis was the one sport I hoped Rare would make a good job of. Sadly it wasn't the case as they've fudged it. The racquet control is too imprecise and not a patch on the superior Wii Sports version. You can aim your ball cross court only for Kinect to detect your movement as a tame return straight back at your opponent. The achievements themselves are ok: serve an ace etc, but this is an uninspiring effort I doubt I'll return to once I've rinsed it of gamerscore. The few words I have for it speak volumes about how disappointed I am with it. I might try Virtua Tennis 4 instead, recommend you do too.
Baseball, again is another missed opportunity. The fact your avatar is invisible makes hitting a ball reliably something of a black art with no small amount of guesswork involved as to when to time your swing. It's a fun enough game, but once again, not up to the lofty standards Nintendo set in their stellar effort on the Wii. The achievements look to be among the harder on offer, purely due to the horrible batting. Fielding & pitching on the other hand are much better. You can follow instructions from your catcher as to the optimal throw to strike out the opposing batter. Fielding's pretty straightforward too, although I've yet to play on anything beyond Novice so it could be nails hard at that level.
The pick of the entire bunch has to be golf. That's a sentence I thought I'd never type as it's a sport I have no time for.The beauty of this is you can swing with gusto (or like Stabmaster Arson if you wish) and not have to worry about smashing your television like a Wiimote wielding spaz. It's a delight to play and you'll get better at it the more you do so. I almost guarantee you'll want to play it again, even if you don't really do golf games beyond the odd XBLA effort (Golf: Tee It Up! is a good pick). Rare have outdone themselves in the implementation and it's telling that the first batch of paid for DLC is an additional golf course. Putting is very well done too and a good set of achievements will add to the longevity of this mode.
There's the usual avatar unlockables you'd expect from a firstparty Microsoft Studios game. In addition, challenges you can send to friends & multiplayer add to the appeal of the whole package over the first game.
All in all then, something of a mixed bag with some inherent problems that should've been picked up before release. That said, it's essential if you own a Kinect and intend to play it with family & friends.
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