At its core, Kinect Sports Rivals (KSR) is a collection of sports-themed mini-games. The mini-game compilation games have garnered mostly negative feedback, usually justifiably, from regular gamers over the years. Worse still is when the games are played with motion controls, be it the Wii, PlayStation Move, or first generation Kinect. While the jury of Kinect 2.0 for the Xbox One is still out, it is undeniably technologically superior to its predecessor, and thus it’s the most capable motion tracking device for consoles to date. A superior camera and more detailed tracking are two of its most generic benefits, and the team at Rare exploited these benefits with KSR.
At first launch, KSR leads you through a Champion (i.e., your in-game character) Creation sequence. This process is simple, actually kind of fun and cool, and only takes about five minutes. Narrated by the famous voice of David Tennant, players will follow simple steps like moving their face from side to side and remaining still while Kinect scans in their details, including skin and hair color, hair style, and a few other criteria. Watching your Champion take form on screen is pretty slick, as what begins as a simple sphere of light quickly becomes a bizarre pixelated face, which gets shaped and redefined before suddenly becoming a high res animated “you.” Kinect and KSR did a fine job of importing myself, as well as a few friends and family I had try it out. You can tweak your appearance afterwards, keeping in mind there are dozens of different outfits to purchase and unlock in-game, or select a completely randomized Champion, too.
With your character or avatar now all set, you’re ready to play. Quick Play allows you to jump into each sport, or, you can play through the story mode, or Team Story rather. A story mode for what is essentially a mini-game compilation is unusual, but I thought Rare made a good decision to include one. Otherwise, KSR truly becomes just a party game, with no clear sense of direction unless just unlocking everything and going up leaderboards are a big deal to you. There are detailed leaderboards you can access via the KSR Hub, both a separate download or also accessible from within the game, but for those of us who typically play single-player, this Story mode is a very welcomed feature. While certainly not the deepest Story mode you’ll play this month, entertaining the conflict between three rival teams on this wonderful island of sports where the game takes place is sufficient. The Wolf Clan, Eagle Legion, and Viper Network are all significantly different, and their captains want you on their team. The Team Story mode takes you through numerous challenges in which you compete in events and eventually choose your allegiance to one of the teams. With fully voiced actors and in-game cutscenes, these provide some structure to the game as a whole.
Whether you’re playing the story, quick play, against the AI or with friends, KSR revolves around six sports: Wake Racing, Rock Climbing, Target Shooting, Bowling, Tennis, and Soccer. Not all of these are directly relatable to their real-life counterparts, like Soccer which greatly reduces the complexity of the real game, which I’ll detail soon. On the other hand, Rock Climbing pretty closely matches what you might expect in a real life experience. Within each sport, there are three powerups that you can unlock. You also maintain a separate XP meter and Level for each sport, with the max level being 20. As you level up, the options for buying more equipment becomes available, but you still need points, known as Coins, to buy them. You can, however, look at the equipment before you are able to unlock and then purchase it. Doing so can help you plan what sport you want to focus on, or on how to save and spend your points. Equipment upgrades give a unique appearance, but are also tied to powerups. So for example you will want to upgrade your jet ski at some point, now whether that’s the jet ski that has the Speed Burst powerup with a level two re-charge time or the one with the Mine Deployment powerup with a level three strength is up to you. Clothing for your Champion are distinct for each sport too, with twenty or so different themed outfits you can purchase with points earned by participating in events, or getting paid by Sponsors. So while the outfits between the different sports are different, appropriate for the sport in question, you can have a common design theme for your appearance across the different sports.
Before unlocking each sport, you have to go through a Training session, which is led by Coach. Coach is an NPC who has that drill sergeant persona, mixed in with a little bit of cheesy humor. His presentation and role is done sufficiently. Training sessions are brief, and can be replayed by going to the Options area. Within these, Coach verbally instructs you, while the Demonstrator character shows you what to do, and then competes against you after the instructional cutscene is over.
Now is as good a time as any to start to look at each sport more closely and my notes of each. First up was Wake Racing, and this ultimately proved to be my favorite event. To play, you can either sit or stand and hold out both hands in front of you, with their elevation even. In other words, act like you’re holding onto a straight handle bar, just like a typical jet ski. To accelerate, and this is where the new Kinect tech comes in, simply clinch your (right) fist. To slow down, open your fist up, even a little, and the speed of your jet ski will be reduced, allowing you to take those sharp turns better. If you get off course or wreck, you will be reset back on the course, but you’ll lose several seconds in the process obviously. Anyway, to turn, treat it like tank-controls: push forward with one hand, and pull the other hand back in towards your body. You can lean your to the left or right to get some extra touch on those turns. For tricks and stunts, which are Crowd Pleasers that count towards filling up your Powerup meter, you can let go of these virtual handlebars and put your hands out to your side, or if you have enough air, like from jumping off a ramp or a big wave, you can lean forward or backwards to perform a flip. Combine both flipping and hands-free to really get the crowd fired up. Five different courses for Wake Racing are included, and the difficulty for events, in Wake Racing and the other sports, is indicated by a simple three stage meter next to the icon that you “click” into to start the event.
Powerups in all sports are activated by either just saying “Powerup” out loud, or lifting one leg straight up, as in bringing your knee to your chest (or close to it), and stomping downwards (although you do not need to do the stomping motion aggressively). Either way works, I preferred the gesture option instead of the verbal one. In Wake Racing, powerups include a short but significant Speed Burst, Mine Deployment, or Force Field, which protects you from mines that the track has inherently, or that opponents drop. The Force Field can also keep you from wrecking if you run into an object too fast. As with all sports, you can only take one powerup into an event, and you cannot pick up other powerups during the event. To reuse a powerup, you have to fill up the meter in the upper left corner of the screen by performing Crowd Pleasers.
So Wake Racing was pretty fun, but Rock Climbing, a new event to Kinect Sports, was just about as entertaining. With Rock Climbing, players need to open their hands, reach up, grab a virtual hold by closing their hand, and then repeat the motion with their other hand; coordination is key. You will need to also move to the sides by reaching sideways, so it’s not a completely a vertical climb. Climbing sideways actually takes a little bit of getting used to as far as coordination goes, but we’re talking a few minutes here. One key factor to bear in mind with Rock Climbing is the stamina meter; if you’re trying to climb and your stamina is low, you will drop down a few feet. You’re supposed to stop and rest every so often to let the stamina meter refill. Vertical gaps in the holds require you to literally jump up and grab, which is kinda cool. Other dangers include electrically charged holds, wind gusts, and opponents who will literally try to grab your ankles and throw you off the wall. You can escape these attempts by quickly climbing. Rare could have used a stomping or kicking motion to allow you to fend off attackers I suppose, but Kinect would have to see your feet (which it has to for the Soccer game) and it might accidentally activate a powerup I suppose. Speaking of which, powerups for Climbing include a Blast Wave to weaken your opponent’s grip and the Super Jump, which gives you a nice vertical boost upwards.
Lets talk Bowling. I haven’t played motion-controlled bowling since some late nights with Wii Sports some seven years ago. In KSR, Bowling is straight-forward: you can put some extra polish on the ball by rotating your wrist at the time of release and also curving your arm upon release to direct the ball, and of course you can also just power the ball straight down the middle or just off to the side for smashing power. I’m not a technical bowler, so my technique is generally limited to stepping a bit to the left or right and tossing out a fast ball. You get two cracks per frame, of which there are typically ten, to knock as many of the ten pins down as you can. It’s a more challenging-through-refined controls experience than the Wii Sports bowling of old, making Strikes more gratifying. As far as motion controls, these work well — simply reach out with your (right) hand, close your hand and keep it closed to grab the ball, and then swing forward, opening your hand as you do; it feels natural. In a social setting, the Hand Switcher powerup is easily the favorite, as it causes your opponent to have to bowl with their other hand, with laughs almost sure to ensue.
Tennis wasn’t all that appealing to me. If I’m to compare it to playing with the Wiimote, I would have to say I prefer holding something in my hand to emulate a racquet than nothing, which is of course how you play it on Kinect. Once again, the motions pretty closely mimic their real-life counterparts — toss the ball up in the air with the ‘free’ hand, swing with the other hand that has the racquet. Interestingly, you cannot move to your left or right, even though the AI can, so this feels like tennis on rails. The key is just timing; the ball will bounce once, its marked on screen, and you just need to hit the ball back with an appropriate swing as the ball enters the ‘hit zone.’ If you hit it just right, it will have some extra force on it making it harder for the opponent to successfully hit it back. I felt kind of disconnected from the experience, and maybe that will go away with more play, but timing the hits didn’t feel quite right. I’m not a big fan of tennis anyway, and sometimes the matches with the AI just went on longer than I cared for, which was still just a few minutes, but it was less enjoyable than some of the other sports for sure. Powerups include the short-lived but useful Super Racket that takes the guesswork out of having perfect timing and the Disruptor Racket that temporarily screws with your opponents racquet, making it very difficult for them to get a shot.
Target Shooting was more simplistic than I expected, and it too falls into that so-so category with Tennis and Soccer. With Target Shooting, you reach out, grab a gun in your left or right hand, and then you go into a first person view and face this transparent wall. On the other side, you can see your opponent who is in turn looking back at you. On this transparent wall, targets of varying point values pop up and float around or form different shapes, etc. I think there are some twenty total variations of targets and how they move. Some targets detract from your point total if you hit them, others require you to hover over them for a short period to break their shields, and others still are marked with a number (like 1-5, so if you hit them in order you get more points). You can steal targets from your opponent for those targets that pop up above the top of the wall. Additionally, each player has a turret that you can activate every so often by shooting it. When you do, for a few seconds, the player on the other side will have to literally sway to dodge projectile fire. Playing Target Shooting isn’t that engaging, in that you just move your hand around — either Minority Report style or by forming your hand into the classic ‘gun’ — and simply “mouse over” the targets. So you’re just moving a reticule over a target and the actual ‘shooting’ takes place automatically. It’s a little anti-climatic.
The final sport to cover is Soccer. This is a ‘stripped down’ version of soccer, but it does maintain three pillars of soccer: passing, shooting, and goaltending. There is a time limit, roughly three minutes per match, and each player has a ‘shot clock’ when they’re on the offensive that lasts about twenty seconds. In that time, you must pass the ball from your goal out to one of several players. Defenders — represented by red holograms that move in very short patterns, attempt to block your passes. You can use both feet or just use one, and as you quickly chain successful passes together, the ball becomes energized, leading up to your shot on goal. As you pass to the last player who is the striker, you can either do a header, strike for the corners, or shoot straight on. Getting finesse on shots takes a little getting used to, but it can make for a more satisfying shot attempt. Of all the sports, I felt like Soccer had the most issues with control response, but it’s easily the most complicated of the bunch and even it didn’t do terribly. Besides trying to get the finesse on the shots, I struggled to move to block shots on goal that were wide. Actually moving my body to the left or right to try to get to the ball in time didn’t work, and I couldn’t seem to lean enough either. The Training didn’t say anything about diving, but I guess I could try that tonight… additionally, there were some times where just getting the first pass off took a few seconds to ‘kick in’ and once I activated a powerup on accident because the Kinect picked up a passing motion I did as the ‘raise your leg up and stomp’ motion, which activates a powerup.
Overall, the six sports work well in terms of Kinect functionality, with only intermittent or almost no issues (except for Soccer), which is more than I can say for almost any other motion game I have played. Of the bunch, I place Wake Racing and Rock Climbing at the top in terms of fun and satisfying play, with Bowling and Target Shooting in the middle followed by Soccer and Tennis as ones I don’t intentionally seek out to play (but have to when the Story calls for it).
So one of the funniest things I “discovered” while playing KSR is that there are times when your character is being tracked even if you aren’t, at that moment, actively engaged in the game. For example in Bowling, before you reach over to pick up the bowling ball, or in Tennis, while you’re waiting on a serve, or in Soccer after you make a stop on goal. Even though your Champion’s back is facing you, that doesn’t mean you can’t still make some motions as taunts just for laughs. Trying to flip off your opponent, by the way, just results in your Champion raising his hand, so, that’s one case where Rare disabled Kinect’s ability to distinguish finger placement haha. But, you can still move your arms and legs in a variety of other poses that are sure to generate some laughs. It’s kind of unfortunate you can’t see your Champion from the front, though.
Going over my notes, here are a few other miscellaneous things I, uh, noticed. First, the Top 40-ish soundtrack is, I guess expected at this point, but no less grating. Sponsored events are cheesy; the first of these is State Farm, who of course sponsors the NBA heavily. Cliff Paul is literally in the game and you bowl against him (sigh). I don’t know, call me old school, but I don’t care for in-game advertising, which this very clearly is. Competing in sponsored events does unlock a regular coinage bonus and exclusive clothing, as long as you do a lot of Crowd Pleasers and win. It’s also kind of annoying, or at least telling, that the AI, even if they are way behind in Bowling, will still get fired up about a six pin or higher frame, even though they’re impossibly far behind. As with most games of this type, you’re likely to get the best mileage by playing with local friends. There is online integration, but no actual online multiplayer. Your Champion does show up in other people’s games, though, and is supposed to have the ‘tendencies’ that you do when you actually play, too. I haven’t had enough experience with the game to vouch how well this works. There are leaderboards for all of the different events, and you can share photos and of course video clips of your gameplay as well, all through the KSR Hub.
That just about wraps it up, so lets get to the summary…