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Review: Kinect Sports: Season Two

Last year’s Kinect Sports was a surprise hit for most of us in the Stevivor bullpen. I mean, go look at that game’s cover! Arriving the same time as Microsoft’s Kinect – a peripheral that was or wasn’t a gimmick at that point, as we hadn’t decided yet — Rare’s sports simulator looked like an uninspired HD version of Wii Sports.

It wasn’t. We loved it.

This holiday season brings a new Kinect Sports title, Season Two. Rare and BigPark have teamed up to offer six new sports for our enjoyment — tennis, golf, darts, skiing, gridiron football and baseball.

After playing for hours, I’ve decided that all the quick and cool sports were used for the first title. That being said, Season Two does have some enjoyable activities. To be perfectly honest, this title offers the best golf gameplay I’ve ever experienced on a console, and I’ve got a fair few Tiger Woods titles under my belt. The problem with it, and most of the other sports titles on the disc, is that they take too long mucking about between actions. You’ve finished that hole? Great. Watch this loading screen for a bit while we load another. Same thing between innings in baseball. And between downs in football.

As for the sports themselves? In golf, I love that my caddy tries to help out by mentioning if I need to use a soft, medium, or full-powered shot, but I can’t for the life of me judge how powerful my swing is actually going to be. I use the lightest shot imaginable, barely moving, and that ball FLIES down the fairway. The practice shot mode helps to experiment with movement, so it’s not a huge issue; if you’re trying for a hole-in-one, you’ll need a lot of patience and make use of practice quite a bit.

Tennis is just like last year’s table tennis…but, you know…bigger. No complaints there. In the unavoidable comparison to Wii Sports‘ tennis, you get a sense while playing that your movement and positioning actually control where the ball is going to be hit, unlike trying the same with a Wiimote.

Gridiron and baseball play as you expect; you’re going to have to make swinging movements to bat, or kicking movements for a field goal. Baseball was great fun in that you can hit home runs, or you can hit line drives that will force you to make an (actual) run for first base. You’re not just going to stand there swinging, you’ll actually get your whole body moving. Catching the ball is sometimes stupid – if you’re fielding and the ball is coming straight for you, you can’t reach across from your glove side to your non-glove side, oh no. Instead, you’ll be forced to stick out your non-gloved hand to bounce the ball in the air and THEN catch it with your gloved hand. Yep, true realism there.

Football is better played in co-op mode, where one friend is the quarterback, throwing, and you’re the receiver, catching. No gay jokes, please. In versus mode, one player sits down and watches as the other tries to get a touchdown. You don’t defend AT ALL; that’s all left up to the computer. I’ve never felt so helpless in all my life.

Skiing is by far the easiest, yet most enjoyable sport on the disc. You bop along the course, crouching for more speed, jumping at inclines and dipping and dodging to get through flags on a normal course. The best time you’ll have skiing, though, is when you’re moving to avoid obstacles in its Challenge Mode.

Now. Darts.

Darts is the worst game imaginable in real life, and the most frustrating on the disc. You’re supposed to make a fist and aim at the dart board, then pull back to set your position, then make a throwing motion to, well…throw. If that worked, I wouldn’t have a bad thing to say about the mode. The pull-back to set aim thing? IT NEVER WORKS. You’ll aim for the centre of the board, only to pull back and reset your aim about five yards to the left or right. It’s a game that got me so angry I was ready to snap the game disc in half.

Let me know if you have better luck with darts, eh?

Anyways, back to happier things. As stated above, Challenge Mode is back, offering all the complexity and merriment of the original Kinect Sports, with the added bonus of the ability to directly challenge a friend to try to better your score. The option to challenge is made easier by the implementation of voice commands, which do everything from selecting a sport, to turning multiplayer on or off, to initiating or accepting challenges. Small changes, yes, but ones that make navigation easier and help to innovate the title. I enjoyed switching from ‘Take a shot’ mode to ‘Practice’ mode and back in golfing, just by saying so.

One problem with Challenge Mode? I played a couple, then challenged my roommate to better me, and we couldn’t just have him accept straight out. We had to log off my profile from Xbox Live, exit to the Dashboard, and re-enter Kinect Sports: Season Two logged in as my roommate just so he could accept the challenges. Surely it could have been easier than that. I understand that you’re not always going to want to challenge someone in the same room as you, but the system should be able to cater for both scenarios.

Overall, Kinect Sports: Season Two is a very solid title with new sports that will appeal to both hardcore gamers and casual families. If you’re a fan of the first game, definitely pick this up – especially since it’s not priced as a full-fledged retail title; I paid $60 for my copy. If you’re new to the series, but keen on trying it out, I’d recommend you pick up the original Kinect Sports first. Sure, voice commands are fun, but the activities offered in the original disc would be more enjoyable for a first-time player.


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.