Kinect Sports Rivals Reviews
Kinect Sports Rivals answers the question "What has Rare been up to?". Sadly, the game falls short of the mark on almost every category, with the biggest hit being on fun. With three of the six included events ranging from unpleasant to unplayable, you get dragged through dialogue I'd never, ever want to hear again.
It's not that Kinect Sports Rivals is a terrible game, but it certainly doesn't utilize the Kinect in any new meaningful ways. After Microsoft's claims of improving the Kinect, I just wanted RARE to be a little more experimental with the tech, and sadly, that doesn't happen here.
However, I'm not convinced the purchase price of $59.99 lines up with what Kinect Sports Rivals has to offer. Of the six game modes, only bowling and wake riding stand out, and the other modes suffer from a lack of entertainment. For all the enhanced graphics and technology involved, the game isn't that much more impressive than Wii Sports was at release, and it doesn't feel worthy of a full-price sticker. It's fun to pick up and tool around with some of the modes, and between the gameplay and the avatar scanning, it showcases the Kinect's capabilities. It's just disappointing that the game doesn't have that much depth, and with few exceptions, its only successes are things that have already been done before with different technology.
Rare's collection of sporting mini-games hopes to justify Mirosoft's inclusion of the Kinect camera with every Xbox One. Unfortunately the jury is still out.
As a pack-in for the console, this would have been far easier to forgive, but at full price and with no proper multiplayer, it's a tough sell. Rare's game looks stunning and is enjoyably tame, but lacks in true winner's grit and star quality. Maybe next season.
Instead of making a case as to why you need a Kinect, Kinect Sports Rivals shows that the peripheral—and most games revolving around it—still have a long way to come.
Sprinting out of the starting blocks like Usain Bolt, Kinect Sports Rivals quickly pulls over short of the finish line and soils itself like Paula Radcliffe. Two of the six sports on offer here pack a real punch, with the others lagging way behind. A valiant effort, if not a lot more else. A genuine attempt at highly competitive sports are hampered by a needlessly convoluted interface.
Rare kind of dropped the ball with Kinect Sports Rivals. It's not very fun to play, outside of jet ski racing, and the fact you have to wade through so much just to get to free play is tedious. Casual players probably won't mind trying out this Olympiad, but other players may want to stick to the more general – and less expensive – Xbox 360 collections.
Kinect Sports Rivals isn't going to sell anyone on an Xbox One, or even Kinect for that matter, but it is definitely the best use of the device to date. For those looking for a fun way to get active with their new $500 machine, this is the best example of it yet. I love Rare, and think they still make some of the best software. Rivals definitely feels polished and carrying that quality.
You can squeeze a little bit of fun out of Kinect Sports Rivals. Some of the games aren't so bad and it certainly stands as a great demo of what the new Kinect can do. You can also have the game render a rule 63 version of yourself and… shut up… I was just curious what female me looked like. You even get an achievement for it. So that's kind of neat. It's just that every game in the compilation is shallow when done in single-player and broken when done in multiplayer. Even though you may have fun with the games that actually work, there's little here to keep you coming back to play them again a second time.
I admire the effort to build an online infrastructure and career story mode, but the selection of games feels slight
Kinect Sports Rivals is a good game on the Xbox One but it's not the game that successfully turns Kinect into a true gaming medium. I'm sure this will come but for now, it is easily the best motion controlled game on any console and developers RARE have really thought outside the square in terms of translating these real world games onto the Xbox One console. Some games such as a soccer were a little too complicated, especially with the accuracy of the motion controls but other titles such as bowling and jet ski racing almost felt like the real thing.
While Kinect Sports Rivals adequately demonstrates the improvements made to the latest model of Kinect, uninspired gameplay lets the overall package down.
If you can stomach the price tag and a few other issues, there are some minigames worth your time.
As a full retail release more than five months after the Xbox One's release, Kinect Sports Rivals is a tough pill to swallow.
".. the Kinect as a controller is impressive. I did my best to break the Kinect and it worked (at least partially) in every situation I came up with. "
Inconsistent Kinect controls dampen the fun once again in this latest attempt to compete with the masterful Wii Sports
Until then, Kinect Sports Rivals will remain an interesting experiment that never manages to live up to the expectations linked to it.
The latest release in the Kinect Sports series hits several snags.
[I]t doesn't seem to quite live up what we've been led to expect from the new Kinect sensor, resulting in a lot of frustration the ultimately gets in the way of the experience. It'll make a great rental for when you have friends over, but it's hard to recommend for anything beyond that.