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.
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.
The latest release in the Kinect Sports series hits several snags.
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.
A good tech demo that lacks the game to match.
As a full retail release more than five months after the Xbox One's release, Kinect Sports Rivals is a tough pill to swallow.
Kinect Sports Rivals is an uneven collection of sports-themed minigames that won't hold your interest for long.
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.
While Kinect Sports Rivals adequately demonstrates the improvements made to the latest model of Kinect, uninspired gameplay lets the overall package down.
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.
The package as a whole is good enough to not be an embarrassment, but there are far too many times where the interface gets in the way of the entertainment that the generally passable gameplay provides.
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.
It's a package that rivals the very best party games for volume, so ultimately when the whistle blows and the action is go, there's plenty of fun to be had with Kinect Sports Rivals.
Inconsistent Kinect controls dampen the fun once again in this latest attempt to compete with the masterful Wii Sports
If you're looking for a Kinect title for the entire family, or one that merely shows the benefits of next-gen hardware hold promise for motion controlled gaming, then Kinect Sports Rivals won't disappoint. If you're hoping for a sports simulator that succeeds at every turn, well… you've likely got a lot more waiting to do.
The controls and detection afforded by the new hardware undoubtedly makes Kinect Sports Rivals a much more technically-accomplished title, with fewer of the niggly irritations gamers almost expect from a motion control game. The events generally work (tennis aside) but, sadly, functionality isn't the basis for an enjoyable game. The emphasis on the story mode and online sharing loses the simple magic of local multiplayer and the silliness of party play. Yes, party games can be a bit grating, but Kinect Sports always managed a good mix where you could play seriously or play for laughs. Rivals does not have this same variety and, while it controls well, there is a definite loss of personality.
Kinect Sports Rivals is too loose and inconsistent
Kinect is still a solution in search of a problem, and while this is an impressive tech demo it's a largely uninteresting video game experience.
Kinect Sports Rivals is a well-constructed game with an enjoyable structure and smartly integrated multiplayer. But it's already looking dated as it continues to struggle against the limitations of its chosen interface. For all the extra power of Kinect 2.0, and the surrounding artifice of online competition, at its best the game only equals the highs of older, more familiar games - games whose players and makers have moved on.
[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.