Kinect Sports

Six Sports (Soccer, Track & Field, Bowling, Table Tennis, Boxing, Volleyball) + mini games involving these same activities = Lots of Fun. First off... I would like to say The Kinect works very well with all this Kinect Sports title. I have excellent response times. There are really no glitches that stand out that would make this title have any serious negative feedback. Kinect Sports works! Its fun for everyone and has something for everyone young and old. It is intuitively easy learn all the moves as you move your body the way you actually need to. So it is simply plug and play and lots of fun. It all basically comes down to getting off your couch and doing what you physically can with these sports activities. The only negative that can be said is that if you don't like a particular sport activity because you simply don't like that sport ...you can just move on to a different sport activity. However, you really can't be critical as these sport games are intended for easy fun for everyone. All these sports are easy to get into regarding the fun factor. Even if you just play Kinect Sports title for half an hour at least you got off the couch and did some physical exercise in a fun manner. These are not a heavy thinking sport activity games... Its a physical arcade game activity to get you moving and it does all this well. You use your XBOX360 Dashboard Avatar within Kinect Sports which mimics your every move and is plenty fun to watch react as you move your body. Its pretty cool. Don't over think that this is complex and not for you. Kinect Sports is for everybody. The only thing is with every Kinect game is to make sure you have at least 6'ft. to 8'ft. of clear play area in front the Kinect camera. So, to reiterate! Kinect Sports is fun for everyone. It is not complicated. It responds excellent to your body motions. The fun factor is excellent. Kinect Sports is not a serious mind game it is quality family entertainment for all ages to have fun together with family and friends! And a note for all you guy only vs guy only hardcore gamers.... female gamers are into this Kinect Sports title too! ; ) So, if you must continue to save the world within your popular guy only couch potato titles. No need for me to further explain what your 'frag'n' missing.

I just got finished playing all of the sports in Kinect Sports and here is my evaluation: 1. Track & Field: This area includes a variety of different activities that work well with the basic body movements the Kinect can control. These include running , jumping, and throwing things (javelins & discus). I think young and old would both have fun with this! This may actually be my favorite activity in this game. 2. Bowling: Not as much control as Wi Sports bowling--but it is actually feels more like bowling when you can just stick your hand out to pick up the ball and then swing your arm to bowl. No controller to hold on to or push buttons. Once again this is an activity that would appeal to both young and old. Personally, I still like the bowling in Wii Sports better because of the more precise control. 3. Boxing: I like this better than the Wii Sports Boxing--but there is still some lag time and I just don't get the feel that all my moves are translating accurately. Plus, like an earlier reveiwer indicated it seems like punching wildly is actually a winning approach in this game. I do like how you can just hold your arms up to block--this felt very natural. I'm waiting for the Kick Boxing version because when you kick your legs in this activity your avatar kicks its legs--but they don't seem to translate to "hits" in the game. 4. Beach Volleyball: This one will take some time to master. It can get a bit confusing because there are several different techniques involved--jumping, hitting, and blocking. If you're tall--make sure you don't have a ceiling fan above you--or at least make sure it's not on! 5. Table Tennis: Once again it was fun to play without a controller in my hand but I felt there were a few times when the intensity of my hits were not reflected in what actually happened on screen. For example, when an opportunity comes up for a "smash" the game announces it and then actually does it regardless of whether I swung harder or not. 6. Soccer: Fun and interesting. You don't have to run around the field yourself. Your player magically appears where the ball is kicked to. Simple body movements control your kicks and blocks. Gray directional lines on the screen show the directionally options when kicking and your location when blocking. Throughout the games the Kinect takes photos and short videos of your movements. These are played at the end of each game. The images are saved so you can share them with others. This feature will appeal to some and not to others. For example, I find the images of my son interesting and humorous--but I need to find out how to erase the images of me! Adding a second player was extremely easy. If I wanted to join my son all I had to do was step in front of the TV and the Kinect added me to the in-play game. The graphics are also much better than the Wii! Kinect Sports looked great on a 40" HDTV. We don't even play the Wii on this TV because of how bad it looks. Bottom line: If you have an XBOX already--adding the Kinect and Kinect Sports really adds a nice dimension to your video game experience. If you have young kids or older folks that have trouble remembering what buttons to push on a remote--it doesn't get any easier than the Kinect. P.S. It is a neat and strange sensation to be standing in front of your TV and the avatar on the screen is doing the same movements that you are. You can sway, move your arms and legs, and dance, and the avatar mimics it. This alone makes for good entertainment!

My (just turned) 7 year old daughter and I play this game on a nightly basis. The accuracy for this title is about as good as it currently gets with the Kinect. For my daughter, who is a complete non-gamer, she was able to pick up this title and run with it without hardly any direction, and although she highly anticipated the Kinectimals, and initially turned her nose up at this title, this has since been crowned her favorite in our library by a landslide. I am more of an avid gamer myself, but have found myself more driven to play these games with my daughter as they are great active entertainment, while offering far greater family fun than your typical "sit in a chair" FPS. At first use, I found this title to be slightly irritating in it's lack of recognition of who we were as players, as it would commonly swap us, or pick a generic player. This turned out to not be the fault of the game, but rather the fault of impatience (not waiting at the beginning for it to recognize us, and trying to just select our players) combined with the lack of going through the routines in the Kinect setup for recognizing us a few times for fine tuning. The bowling takes a little bit to get used to, but after you do, it's hard to go back to WII bowling where the physical position has to be calibrated manually. For kids, I could swear this game adjusts down for them, as my daughter is almost equally matched with me, and sometimes beats me even when I'm trying. She absolutely loves that, of course. The track and field, while some say is great, I actually found a bit awkward. Specifically with the hurdle jumping, the timing seemed a bit lagged and took the most time to get used to. The boxing is just "meh"... It seemed to not quite line up with what we were trying to do, and the lag really showed itself in this game, so it ended up in wildly throwing punches at the screen, and rarely going back to visit that particular game. Could it have been done better? Sure, just look at the block game in the Kinect Fitness title. This, however, does not lower my review of this game, because I really had little expectations for the boxing in the first place. The table tennis was exactly what you'd expect, and was entertaining to use you hand as a paddle while watching your avatar mimic your actions. The soccer was great, and very forgiving to the younger ones. My daughter was able to run around the room, and the sensor still picked up her movements. The simplicity of the coerced actions in this game made it very easy to pick up, while still allowing for a great deal of fun. The main attraction for both my daughter and myself was the volleyball. The amount of craziness that ensues from jumping up to spike a ball, going in for a block, or moving side to side while running into each other to try to get the ball was the icing on the cake for this title, and with this title as well, I believe it forgives kids quite a bit on their movement in this game. Initially we spent quite a few matches losing, as the challengers do not commonly miss, but we are semi-pro after repetitive nights of playing this game. Overall, this title has been a huge hit, and currently is the family favorite.

Oldie but Goldie, great for classic Kinect, boys still love it

Congrats to Microsoft for a highly responsive and fun game. Gets the kids off the couch and up moving for hours. We got this game today and our 13 year old son played for three or four hours. He was so exhausted! And it is just as entertaining to watch...the real entertainment is not on the screen, lol! This has 6 games: beach volley ball, soccer, boxing, bowling, track and field, and ping pong. They were all very responsive to the movement of the person playing. There are several skill levels to choose from so you can choose: beginner, amateur, professional and I think something else. There are tips and tutorials throughout the game. And there is no need to get bored because you can challenge others in the room or on xbox live. There are also mini games/challenges and party mode. Have not tried those yet. It can be played as a single player or with others. For anyone hesitant about the Kinect...the games are a lot of fun and it is easy to calibrate (which I would NOT skip). Lighting is not a problem. Our set up is this: we have the projector set up to the xbox360 and it projects on the wall with surround sound. Because of the projector it is best to have a dim room. We actually have the lights OFF and it works GREAT. It actually suggests dimming the room a bit. I am really impressed with how the game is able to pick up the movements of the player even in darkness. I really think the key is to carefully go thru the calibration before doing each game. The game will remember your settings each time you use it. If you are still having problems, adjust the lighting and be sure that there are no people, pets, curtains, etc. fluttering nearby or behind the player or the movement will "hijack" your game. And it seems to have more difficulty recognizing movement with baggy clothing. This is simply fantastic for a family game. All can participate and burn some calories while having fun! Edit: 11/26/2010 So far we have played Kinect Adventures, Dance Central, Kinect Sports. Since it is the holidays and we are all together, we literally play for hours at a time. The kids grew tired of Kinect Adventures quickly, but really their target audience appears to be much younger kids. My kids are Halo/Call of Duty/Assasin's Creed players. Kinect Sports really gets them going though. Maybe because we are playing as a family. I truly think most people will really enjoy the bowling. I had wondered about the motion detection and dimming of lights. When I was playing Dance Central the time of day was different and the lighting more to my left side (coming from the kitchen and dining room). The arm movements seemed to have difficulty registering. I played with the lighting, adding floor lights, turning lights on and off in various areas. Finally, I just turned them off completely and much better. Here is what I found about that...(regarding motion sensing) ============================================================================================================================= "It's made of two main parts: a projector and an IR VGA camera. The former bounces out a laser (don't worry, Microsoft insists it's safe) across the entire field of play, which the camera picks up to separate you from your sofa on what's called a `depth field.' It's essentially all the pixels that Kinect gets back as IR noise measured in varying colour dependant on how close they are to the system. That way bodies appear a bright shade of red, green etc, and things further away appear grey." ============================================================================================================================= I noticed with sunlight reflecting from my arm that the motion controlled hand bounces everywhere and was impossible to control. Again, pulled the shades and good to go. If the system is using IR, it is no wonder. The dimmer the lights the less it has to sort out the background and can focus only on the body. Shimmering/flickering lights or other movements or very warm sources of light,objects, etc, may confuse the Kinect sensor. If you are one of the people having trouble with responsiveness to your motions, definitely try messing with the amount of light in your room. LESS light. Not more like I have seen some try. As I have said, our set up utilizes a projector and we do have some light in the room because it is a full wall image, so it is not pitch black, but there is very little light in the room. No overhead lighting at all. Hope this helps some who have had trouble with some of their games being a bit buggy.

If you have an Xbox 360, do yourself a favor and get this right now!!! You can't imagine how much fun we have had with this simple game. Ok, so there are different games to play ( from Table Tennis,Boxing, Running and Jumping on a field, Soccer and I believe I'm missing one more) the great thing is that you can play with the computer, with a friend or family member who is with you, or if you are with more people you can make groups and play against them. This is so much fun!!!! We literally spent the entire night playing this on my friends house. They invited us for beer and BBQ the other night and since they have kids (5 and 11 years old) I decided it'll be fun to play all together. Kids and adults. Oh my God!! All the boys (grown up boys) were having a blast!!! They were competing between each other and they were sweating like if they were at the gym!!! I said, Wow you guys are training for the Olympics? !!! So hilarious to see everyone having so much fun, no matter the age. I like that it's easy to understand (like for small kids) and that you are active all the time. You have to stand up and jump, move, run, you exercise. My husband was joking and said this was more fun to do rather than going to the gym to loose weight. There you go! I said. Trust me, buy it. You will enjoy it. You're welcome!!!

I bought the Xbox 360 with the idea that I can't stand getting up, heading to the gym, heading home (30 minutes wasted driving), and in our case braving the snow and bad roads. So I wanted to get a game for the kinect that I could get a bit of a workout on. I figured I would get a bit tired of it, but I would perservere and keep at it to get some weight off. Well, I hit a winner with Kinect Sports. The gameplay is great for me. There is some variety, my favorite for working up a sweat is boxing, but track is also a very good one. There is a track minigame where you race against the clock and see how far you could get before the time runs out, so there is definately some possibilities for diversity. The track and field part of the game it a good balance between running and throwing. I still haven't gotten the hang of the javelin without faulting, but I'll work at it. In short, it's a good enough game to keep me involved, and beats the heck out of running on a tread mill in my opinion. I have 4 levels of hardness to do, so I'm running on the 2nd to hardest level and have room to bump up and can't imagine I'll need any more than that. I think I can keep it up for the long run for 1/2 hour a day 4-5 days a week, which was just exactly what I was looking for. Sure it will get a little boring, but it's interesting enough to not make it monotonous. Hope this helps someone.....

Kinect Sports is an excellent game for family game nights! It is loaded with a bounty of sports and mini-games that increase the replay value. Most activities are simple enough to learn that players of all ages can jump in and play. This makes it similar to Kinect Adventures , which is included with the Kinect Sensor or the new Xbox 360 Console . However, Kinect Sports game provides much more depth than Kinect Adventures. Our family of four plays Kinect Sports together for an hour or two before we need a rest. Families with young children (ages 6-12) will probably get the most enjoyment out of Kinect Sports . If you have teenagers in your home, I recommend Dance Central instead since older kids will no doubt recognize the songs and dance moves. I also recommend Sonic Free Riders for gamers looking for a workout that resembles big wave surfing. Our ratings for the individual games: Beach Volleyball -- No surprise the most sweat-inducing game in Kinect Sports is also the most fun to play. Gameplay is two vs. two to seven points. There are two related mini-games, Bump Bash (dodgeball) and Body Ball, where the computer calls out a body part (head, foot or hand) and you need to hit the volleyball with the corresponding body part. Kids will enjoy these mini-games while their parents rest on the sofa after a beach volleyball match. Rating: A+ Soccer -- This shortened version of the game manages to cut out a lot of the running while still allowing the player to run the offense and defense. Like beach volleyball, this activity takes time to master and gets more fun the better you get. There are two mini-games, Super Saver (you are the goalie and you need to save 20 goals) and Target Kick (you must get your shots past a goalie to hit the targets). Both mini-games are simple to play and fun for kids. Rating: A Table Tennis -- This game requires a lot of lateral movement, too. Surprisingly, this is my youngest son's favorite game. He was all grins when he successfully completed his first smash and, then, his first ace. The graphics and sound effects do a great job of pulling you into the game. There are two mini-games, Paddle Panic and Rally Tally, for this activity. Paddle Panic serves up a steady stream of balls for you to volley. The goal of Rally Tally is to maintain a rally, simple enough. Rating: A Track & Field -- The javelin and discus events are frustrating until you figure out proper form. However, be ready to "get your knees up...up...up!" for the long jump, hurdles and sprint events. Rating: B- Bowling -- Older players who don't have the knees for the long jump and hurdles will appreciate the controller-less play. This game makes a nice break between track and field sprints. There are two related mini-games, One Bowl Roll and Pin Rush. The first mini-game is target-based as you knock down spares. The second game is a fun workout. Pin Rush is a timed game where you can use two balls to knock down as many pins as possible. Once players get the rhythm, their arms will be swinging in large windmills. Breaking a sweat is a certainty. Rating: C Boxing -- This is the least entertaining sports event in the package. The winning formula involves making over-exaggerated punches and timing for a power shot. Players looking for a realistic boxing experience should look elsewhere. Kids will no doubt flail with both arms swinging windmills. There are no related mini-games to dress up this activity. Rating: D Overall rating: Four stars.