Home > Categories > Games & Puzzles > Xbox 360 > Kinect Sports review
Turn your living room into a world-class stadium, bowling alley, soccer pitch or track-and-field arena. With "Kinect Sports" you're not only the star player, you are the controller - through the magic of Kinect for Xbox 360. See a ball? Kick it. Spike it. Even give it a little topspin. "Kinect Sports" features soccer, beach volleyball, bowling, table tennis, track and field, and boxing.
Simple, intuitive and instantly fun, "Kinect Sports" delivers the ultimate party experience - whether you are trying to outmaneuver the goalie to win the soccer match or cheering on your friends at ringside. The first full-body, controller-free sports game, "Kinect Sports" is so real, you will almost feel the wind in your hair as you fly over hurdles and the sand in your toes as you set, bump and spike your way to volleyball victory.
• Become a multisport athlete. "Kinect Sports" features six team-based and individual sports - soccer, beach volleyball, bowling, table tennis, track and field, and boxing - with many challenges for each experience. Getting into the game is as easy as stepping in front of your TV.
• Take one for the team. "Kinect Sports" includes a variety of fun game modes for solo, cooperative and competitive play with levels to encourage and challenge players of all ages and skill sets. Sports Party mode allows you to compete against a friend, rally a whole room full of players into teams, with everyone jumping in and out to catch a breath, or bring your team to victory.
• Live your sports star dreams. "Kinect Sports" puts your avatar in the spotlight and lets you experience what it is like to be a world-famous sports star. Bask in the glow of the paparazzi fervor with your teammates after a big victory and deck out your avatar with stylish rewards for your proudest gameplay feats.
Requirements:
• Xbox 360 Console
• Kinect Sensor
• 1mb Available Save Game Space
Features:
• Players: 1-4
• Co-Op: 2
• HDTV 720p/1080i/1080p
• In-game Dolby Digital
• User-Generated Content
• In-Game Avatar
XBox Live Features:
• Co-Op: 2
• Online Multiplayer: 2-4
Product reviews...
When my sister brought this game all of us were really keen to try it out as we had only ever tried the "adventure" one before and it was great fun! We were not disappointed, I love the way that you can row up the fans by lifting your arms and feel as if you really were a world famous athlete.
The game offers many games some being Javelin, hurdles, discus, long jump, volley ball, boxing and bowling. I particularly enjoy long jump and boxing, and both are very satisfying workouts. As we often play in groups of 3 or more we usually play in party mode which is cool as you can play against each other in teams, the only slightly annoying thing is that the games in party mode are too short. Besides that, the game is highly enjoyable and most definitely brings out the competitive streak in my family.
Although the games portrayed in the game are in no way how they would feel/be in real life, I find myself so amerced in the game that for a split second my brain believes that I have just broken the 100m sprint world record! This game really does provide an adrenaline rush and everyone from my 3 year old cousin to my 55 year old aunt enjoys playing it.
And another plus is that you all get to watch each other make an absolute fool out of yourselves! So I recommend people of all ages should invest in this exciting and rewarding game!
When my husband and I are in a competitive mood this is the game we throw on and have a major work out and laugh fest.
The fantastic thing about Kinect Sports is I can actually beat my husband at "Sports". To watch his face as he loses in a boxing match is priceless! Or when I won the world record for the the furtherest Javelin thrower was a moment I will remember forever as he moaned about the fact this game was not factual at all. In reality its not but hey it is extremely fun!
You have a couple of options you can either play against opponents (up to four people) or you can play against the computer (if you want to get some practice in.) You can either play just the one game or you can throw on to Party mode and play a mixture - either way you definitely have a work out.
I love the fact that by the end of the night you have stripped down a couple of layers and watching the replays you originally had this perfect face and at the end of the night its red and sweaty and you are huffing and a puffing.
I have learnt the trick is to do each movement slowly and deliberately so as to get the ultimate effect however the running sports still elude me as you have to lift your knees which I am not that great at.
Bowling is definitly our favourite and we can do 3 - 4 games of just that. Its basically now who can get the most strikes one after the other. My three year old daughter has played the bowling and if she isn't throwing the bowling ball in to the crowd she is usually getting a strike which really blows our mind. We have also had friends over and had bowling matches and everyone always enjoys themselves.
Volleyball is great but I find after about 40 hits you do get a bit bored and make a mistake as your concentration slips, not cool if he beats you by 1 or 2 returns.
Kinect is fantastic as you don't need to hold anything - it informs you when its your turn, you put your hands up in the air and follow the instructions - so easy. Definitly a family favourite.
On my best days, I am still usually too busy to get out and do my "30 minutes a day" of minimum active time. The joys of a hefty workload and a knee that got blown out by a rogue paintball. So for me, something like this - where healthy activity need not be planned, but can be done at the drop of a hat whenever 5 minutes presents itself - seemed to be a godsend.
It didn't prove to be quite that miraculous, but it certainly did present me with an environment that didn't tolerate half-baked excuses for sitting around. I leave it to you, the reader, to decide if that's a good thing for you or not.
The range of sports was impressive and comprehensive, and the skill levels started out very low - aimed more at kids and sloths like me I guess - but worked their way up through a series of medal-reward systems to stronger and more strenuous levels of activity.
With six classic sports to work your way through, there is bound to be a game for everyone's tastes. I admit that due to the limited playing space available to me during this test, the Volleyball was a bit of a dead-duck, as I kept moving out of the sensor's zone and it would pause everything while it bleated about me moving, and run through the tedious recalibration sequence. However the Soccer and Boxing proved to be great play, without the need for huge expanses of indoor real estate.
Overall, though I suspect the price is still right up in the "novelty factor" zone, and it will come down to something a little more acceptable as 'a fun, healthy pass time' and less like a 'virtual gym membership investment', I still found the game to be pretty good value for money, very replayable, and extremely engaging despite the primitive (by comparison to other XB360 games) graphics. I guess that either the sensor uses too much computing power, leaving little for the game graphics, or the games were rushed through quickly and the next generation of games will have that near-real quality we consumers have learned to expect.
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Joan Didion (1934 - ), 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem'