Here, you just move your arms and then close your hands to grasp handholds, and then move your arms down to pull yourself up. The courses are gorgeous, and there's a sense of impact with the water as your jet ski crashes against larger waves. When you go over ramps, you can do flips with a quick lean forward or backward, and you can lean from side to side to turn more sharply.

To steer, you turn your arms like you're turning handlebars, and you can ease up on the throttle by opening your right hand. The controls are simple, intuitive, and responsive. You're ushered into your new life as a sporting champion with some wake racing-what we might more commonly call jet ski racing.

When you do get to the island, Kinect Sports Rivals starts by putting its best foot forward. Unfortunately, you have to sit through an unskippable intro sequence each time you go through this process, so if you're hoping to jump into a game with friends or family, you either need to be willing to wait longer than you should have to for everyone to create a champion, or just skip the process and use generic characters. Still, it's always fun to see what the game comes up with. The shape of the face might have an uncanny similarity to yours, or you might see no resemblance whatsoever between yourself and your champion. For the champion creation process, the Kinect scans your face, and then creates a character who may or may not bear a likeness to you. Like the 'drivatars' of Forza Motorsport 5, your champion may appear in events for other players, and ostensibly, he or she will perform at your skill level. It's good for some short bursts of goofy, physical fun, but Kinect Sports Rivals is neither a strong assortment of motion-controlled games nor an entirely promising showcase for the capabilities of the new Kinect.īefore you compete in your first event, Rivals invites you to create your own champion, the digital representation of you who will battle it out in sporting events across the game's island setting. Rivals is a collection of six sports-themed minigames that range from mildly enjoyable events like wake racing and rock climbing to a thoroughly underwhelming and absurd approximation of soccer. Now, we have Kinect Sports Rivals, a better game than Fighter Within but hardly one that makes the case for the Kinect as an essential piece of gaming hardware. But the first game that put the device through its paces, Fighter Within, was an unmitigated disaster.

With the new Xbox comes a new Kinect, one that Microsoft claims can read your movements more precisely than its predecessor.

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