Kinect Sports - Kinect Required (Xbox 360)

Sports games seem to be the way to show off Motion Controllers; Wii Sports was the perfect introduction to the Wii, Sports Champions showed what Move was capable of. Likewise, Rare's Kinect Sports arrives to show Kinect owners what their hardware can really do.

Kinect Sports contains 6 sports; Volleyball, Bowling, Football, Table Tennis, Boxing and Track and Field (which itself contains a further 5 events). This is bolstered by mini-game versions of these sports.

The question everyone wants to know is 'Is this better than Wii Sports/Sports Champions?'. The short answer is; yes. The game makes full use of Kinect and its incredibly easy to use. Menus are easy to navigate, you can use Xbox Live Avatars for players and there are some neat touches that put this ahead of Wii Sports like the inclusion of licensed music when you win an event. Hearing Queen's 'We Are The Champions' blasting out of your speaker while you watch your latest replay can be very satisfying. Kinect Sports even saves a video replay of your antics while playing, which you can choose to delete out of embarrassment or upload to Kinect Share and stick it on Youtube for further embarrassment!

All the sports are well thought out to make use of the hardware, though Football is an interesting choice for inclusion as it's a hard game to implement with motion controls. Rare have tried hard to bring the game to life with Kinect, in fact its the part they've spent the most time on, and it does work to an extent. Obviously it's a dumbed down version of the sport but it's fun. All the sports are easy to use though and work just as you'd expect. There is very little lag in the game as a whole and quite a challenge to beat the leaderboards on the harder difficulty settings.

To give you an idea of how easy it is to use, my 6 year old found it easy to navigate the menus and play the games. She enjoyed most of the games though games like Javelin require quite a bit of accuracy in throwing and co-ordination.

Kinect Sports does what it sets out to do and shows off Kinect but, beyond that, it's great fun and entertaining for the whole family.

I bought this game shortly after getting Kinect after reading a few reviews. To be honest having read numerous reports talking about lag I was slightly apprehensive when I loaded it up. It's fair to say I was blown away by this. If there is any lag it's minimal and you certainly don't notice any lag when you're in the heat of the action.

The choice of sports is great and surprisingly the football works really well. I wasn't entirely sure how that one would work but it's great fun. Boxing is also good fun although being constantly TKO'd by your five year old son every time is not! The track and field is surprisingly varied and the events are all very enjoyable. I particularly like the fact that your avatar whenever it's on screen literally does everything you do. If you want to pull off some Usain Bolt poses before the 100m you can and if you want to taunt your opponent after you've pummelled him to the canvas then it's all possible. It's a small but nice touch. I'm still amazed that Kinect can track your movements in such a way that you can play top spin and slice shots in table tennis and even put spin on the ball when bowling.

The highlights after the game are genius and always have us in histerics when you see yourself pulling off some ridiculous moves!

If I have a criticism then it is probably that the bowling is a little too easy although trust me this is a minor gripe.

A lot of the reviews have talked about the space you need and yes you do need quite a bit of space but the on screen prompts work well to warn you if you need to re-adjust your position.

This is great all round entertainment and for me this is Kinect at it's very best.

If you've got Kinect then go and buy this, you won't be disappointed.

I went to the Kinect launch event last night and picked up Dance Central, Fitness Evolved and Kinect Sports. Well the latter kind of goes without saying as all motion sensor tech seems to be released with a sports game. However this game is much different

There are various sports included as well as mini games, you can play solo against the computer, online(with strangers or Live friends) or local with family and friends

I don't want to compare it to Wii Sports but that's what most people will be comparing it to and let's be honest, that's this games main rival.

So, what does this offer over Wii Sports?

1: It's really involving, particularly in my opinion the table tennis, it feels very real compared to hold a controller and pressing buttons
2: The game has been built really well, from the well made replys to the good AI of computer opponents
3: Fantastic online, i've played a few games with people online and it's really easy to do and fun
4: Good for multiplayer, more so than the Wii as anyone can drop in and out as they please and you can all earn acheivements(if you have logins etc)

What's bad?

Well, mostly if you have more than 1 person playing at once and don't have a large living room you may find sometimes you'll go out of view of the camera or your arm will, plus its possible to easily hit the other person

That's about it really, its a solid, varied game that works well