Carnival Games: In Action (Xbox 360)

This is a mini-game product featuring 20 games that immerse you into the carnival experience. Upon inserting it I immediately got the Kinect Adventures feeling, though Carnival Games: In Action does fall shy of being on par with Kinect Adventures. Though it's basic in gameplay as one could expect from mini-games it does provide a lot of fun when done in a group. Solo play quickly turns boring, but with a group of people the fun is extended. So my 4-star rating for fun is exclusively for groups/families/parties where the craziness of the games themselves will provide a lot of laughter.

GAMEPLAY
The interface is easy to maneuver and you can easily jump into the action. Even if you are the only one signed in to play at the moment, a second person can easily jump in or opt out during gameplay. My friend joined in a few times and this was done very well, unlike other Kinect titles were the co-op can be somewhat of a juggle between "are you in or not?"

CONS
- Solo play will get boring pretty quickly. This is a party game for family and friends.
- 20 mini-games feel too little after a while. A few more games would have been nice.
- It will get old soon if you play it regularly. I advise interchanging this with games like Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports for a varied occasion of fun.

PROS
- Games are quite fun and easy to understand...and enjoy.
- Menus/Interface operates smoothly.
- Kinect makes better use of space and even with two players you can comfortably stand up close to the sensor without needing a huge area.

In general it was not a bad buy and I will keep it in the collection for those moments when we are looking for something whacky or when kids have their friends over.

I was hoping for a little more than what this game had to offer. Overall the game play is OK and can be a bit of a laugh but it gets boring having to take turns. Would of been nice to have more games where two people can play at the same time.

The good
* Excellent representation of a carnival
* Win tickets, buy cool outfits
* A wide variety of mini games
* Great as a party game

The bad
* No so much fun to play alone
* Some mini games are a bit too mini
* Kinect tracking can be a little buggy for some games
* A few games have disappointing Kinect support

Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do is not the first in its series as the game made its first appearance on the Nintendo Wii. Now the game is back on the Xbox, with more mini games, better graphics and of course: Kinect support.

At the carnival

Carnival Games does a very good job at mimicking the representation and feeling of a real carnival. The graphics, music, speech and ambient noise all contribute to giving you that true feeling of being at the carnival. The graphics are vibrant and colorful and create a good looking carnival world for your Avatar to walk around in. The music is one that you would find at a real carnival and the ambient noise of other visitors completes the experience.

The whole game is narrated by a carnival announcer that does a good job at recreating that classic carnival experience by using his semi-yelling voice to announce and explain games. Unfortunately, although it belongs to the carnival, the voice of the carnival announcer started to work on my nerves after a while, especially when he was heckling me after I performed badly at a game.

The games

Carnival games contains 20 mini games and almost all of them are almost perfect copies of games that could be found at an actual carnival. Some are classic games like "Ring Fling", "Alley Ball" and "Strength Test". Others are a little less realistic like "Knockout Punch" (fight a robot punching bag), ", "Funnel Cake Falls" (catch falling pancakes and stack them) or "Crash-Test Dummy" (Use your body to mimic a silhouette). Whether the games are realistic or not, their presentation is excellent and they are all fun to play.
All the games require you to use Kinect, and this adds a whole new dimension to Carnival Games. For most of the games the support for Kinect is excellent: the posing games work really well, in `throwing' games you can control aim and speed with great accuracy (takes some skill) and the boxing game (my personal favorite) will have you sweating in no-time.

Although most of the games make great use of the Kinect sensor some of them don't. For instance: there are ball throwing games where your throwing motion is perfectly mimicked in the game and you have accurate control over where you throw. But then there are other ball throwing games where your throw is determined by a crosshair that randomly moves over the screen: you make a throwing motion and the ball will hit where the crosshair was at that moment. These games have little to do with motion control and are really just about timing. It seemed to me as a really odd choice to have some games make so good use of the Kinect sensor, while others were left as simple timing games.
Then there are also games that do make good use of the Kinect sensor but didn't really work for me. In particular the darting and basketball game were giving me trouble. The dart throwing motion was often not picked up and basketball throws just seemed to be going in complete random directions. This might have to do something with my Kinect setup but it could also be a result of poor programming.

Win

A big part of a real carnival experience and the reason why you would go to a carnival is to win stuff! Fortunately Carnival Games mimics this too and brings that great feeling of being rewarded for excelling at a game right to your living room! After every game you play you will be awarded with tickets. If you perform poorly you will receive a small amount while better performance will award you with more.
The ticket you win can be taken to one of the four vendors and exchanged for wardrobe items for your avatar. There are many items to buy and all of them look very cool: there is a ninja outfit, a pirate outfit and if you have enough tickets you can even dress up your avatar as a gladiator. There is just tons to unlock and if you want it all you'll be playing this game for quite some time to rack up enough tickets. Some items are however not unlocked with tickets but have to be earned by excelling at certain games, so if you want everything you have to play lots and also be very good! A good motivator in order to keep playing I think.
The avatar items you win in game can unfortunately not be transferred outside the realm of Carnival Games (well except for once set). Still, it is a lot of fun to unlock funky outfits and have your extrovertly dressed avatar participate in the carnival events.

Multiplayer

Carnival Games can be played in multiplayer by a maximum of two players. The multiplayer mode is fun, but its implementation could have been better. Most, if not all, of the games lend themselves perfectly for simultaneous multiplayer (both players play at the same time), but with Carnival Games most of the events are played by taking turns. This means that one player is playing, while the other has to watch and wait for his turn. There are only three games that can be played at the same time and there are even three that can only be played in singleplayer and makes me wonder why those can't be played in turns.

This all does not mean that the multiplayer of Carnival Games is not good, it's just a bit slower as I would have wanted since I have to wait for my turn every time. The multiplayer is a great deal of fun and I really enjoyed competing against my friends in the various mini games. It's also nice that the game awards players individually for their performance: nothing more satisfying than to receive twenty-five tickets while your friend only gets a meager five.

As I have talked before Carnival Games does an excellent job at presenting a good representation of a real carnival. This unfortunately also means that carnival games is not so much fun to play alone, like it is not so much fun to go to the carnival by yourself. This is not necessarily a bad thing but just be warned that a lot of fun in this game comes from beating your friends and family in games and making fun of them afterwards. The only thing that I enjoyed in single player was pursuing the achievements (of which some require great skill or great luck to obtain) and to increase my ticket count to further expand my wardrobe. This however ended up in my playing the Hot-Air Balloon Race over and over again because it is a guaranteed quick win. Multiplayer is definitely the way to go with Carnival Games.

Short

While 20 mini-games sounds like a lot of content it actually is not so much. Most of the mini-games are very mini and are finished within a few minutes. I play tested the game with a friend and thus played most of the games in multiplayer (takes longer). Still after about an hour we had finished every single game. After that we went back to play our favorites a few more times but after that we really had played enough. I went back the day after to get a few more tickets and achievements but the games don't provide enough depth for me to keep playing them on and on.

Conclusion

Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do is a fun title that does a great job at mimicking a true carnival experience. It's fun to play the wide variety of games, win tickets and buy crazy outfits for your avatar. The games developers however made a few odd choices, as some of the games make perfect use of Kinect's capabilities while others totally reject the idea of full motion gaming. Odd choices were also made in the multiplayer department, where most of the games can't be played at the same time and some are completely unavailable in multiplayer. Still, the game is a blast to play in multiplayer and is guaranteed for some good laughs.