With a less than impressive line-up for the launch of Microsoft's Kinect, a system which uses motion sensing technology, MotionSports Kinect is just one of many games which fails to impress. Ubisoft's MotionSports features six different sports that are broken down into various challenges. The big problem is MotionSports fails to deliver the accurate, engaging, and enjoyable experience that Kinect Sports provides.
In MotionSports your real body movements are mapped onto your on-screen character, using the Kinect technology. You'll compete in various challenges, set in a variety of sports such as football, skiing, soccer, boxing, hand gliding, and horseback riding. The list of sports contains some familiar well-known sports, but there are some strange additions here. Even stranger is how the challenges in each sport don't seem to represent the sport very well. For example, playing football (American) will consist of you running down a pitch avoiding tackles and throwing the odd pass, rather than actually playing a game of football.
The majority of challenges in each sport don't control well, especially the running challenges and kicking challenges in the football and soccer sections. In the football category you will have to duck and doge tackles or high hurdles, but on numerous occasions i would duck and nothing would happen. The controls feel poor and unresponsive at best. At times you will have to completely fall to the ground before it will read your body movement, even then it's not consistent.
Boxing, the sport i was most looking forward to, was the biggest disappointment. I would throw punch combinations and find nothing happening on screen, at times the only way to fight was to throw the same type of punch (jab) over and over just to get any kind of contact on your opponent. This made the game feel extremely repetitive and really frustrating.
The structure of MotionSports seems non-existent at times. The majority of the game is unlocked from the start and whatever is not unlocked, has no explanation on how to be unlocked. The game doesn't explain anything to you and it just feels like a lazy approach. It might be easy to work out that winning medals and performing well will unlock new items, but it would still have been nice to have some sort of indicator for the unlocks available in the game. The game dosen't even give you any indication of what challenges you have already completed.
These frustrations and annoyances extend throughout the game into the design, including the commentary. Although the announcer has a great amount of energy, his pre-canned lines will often play out at the wrong times. Sometimes the game would even address me (the player) as the wrong sex. These types of embarrassing and lazy mistakes really make the game feel like one big gimmick, for an even bigger motion sensing gimmick.
At least there are some fun reasons to spend time with this game. The hand gliding stages are much more accurate than the others and they can actually be quite fun to play. The hang gliding challenges will have to manoeuvres through a series of aerial gates while maintaining speed and altitude. This mini-game requires a delicate touch and was surprisingly refreshing compared to the rest of the game.
The horseback riding was also quite accurate and provided an enjoyable experience for a short time, it will take precise input to proceed throughout the course and eventually complete. The main thing with all these game modes is that after a while, they are just not fun any more. They all begin to feel repetitive and boring.
Most challenges in MotionSports have multiplayer, which also includes split-screen options for certain events and four-player hot seat options for others. The hot seat section is poorly organized and doesn't even indicate which player should be stepping up to take a shot. The whole game is like this and it's just disappointing.
Overall i was extremely disappointed with MotionSports Kinect. The game has very little variety and feels extremely rushed and lazy. There is no rewarding satisfaction to be had here and it will likely only entertain small kids. The game is really not worth your money and it all seems like one big gimmick for the Kinect motion sensing technology, which is not even impressive in this game. The controls are poor and frustrating and if you really want a sports game for Kinect, there is always Kinect Sports.
MotionSports Kinect is bad 2/10
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