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Kinect Sports Rivals Review

Become a sports champion, just don't trip over the Kinect

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Soccer plays similarly to past Kinect interpretations of the sport. Players take turns attacking and defending. When going up the pitch, you must pass the ball to a teammate ahead until eventually getting into a scoring position and taking a shot. If you pass a certain amount of times, the ball powers-up and makes it more difficult to save. Kinect oddly has trouble tracking the direction of your leg swing at times, leading to intercepts by the opponent. When defending you can only play as the goalie and try to save the shot on net. The save area seems irregularly huge compared to the other sports, requiring you move quite a distance to either side to make a save. It also seems a missed opportunity not to give the defending player any means to interact with the attacker while the ball is being passed up the pitch towards goal.

There are four pitches to play on, and the power-ups are goal shield, super charge, and time steal. The first two are self explanatory, helping directly with attack and defense of your goal. Time steal is a bit of an annoyance - the time allowed to pass and shoot is short already, and Kinect tracking falters often enough by not registering your passes, further wasting time. Still, Soccer is an enjoyable enough experience that can appeal to most players.

Kinect Sports Rivals

Bowling is a similarly basic implementation of the sport. Pick the direction of your bowl by moving left or right, swing your arm and let it go. While the direction and power of the players' swing is tracked fine, the game points out that you can also do swerving shots by flicking your wrist as you swing. However, after trying with multiple players and Champions, Kinect seems oblivious to any wrist movements. Swing slow or swing fast, pulling off curved shots seems to be a random and rare occurrence. Most of the time, your shots end up in a straight line. It's disappointing to see this after the tutorial claims it to be one of the new features of Kinect tracking. Your power-ups are hand switcher (forcing opponent to use a different hand, not exactly a big deal), speed bowl, and meteor ball. The latter is supposed to supersize your ball, but it is seemingly ineffective, beyond the visual effect.

The final event is Tennis, and it also sadly suffers more problems with Kinect tracking. It's surprising because the other sports never had an issue tracking your arms. Here, missed shots and ill timed swings are commonplace. You can execute multiple different swings when you do connect with the ball, and there is some strategy on when to use the various shots. The body positioning also feels awkward and stiff, as you're never sure if your Champion is setting up for a forehand or backhand. The power-ups here are energy boost, super racket, and disruptor racket. We've tried all three, and they didn't have as much impact on the rounds as they do in other sports.

Each completed sporting event earns you coins, fans, and XP. The XP is separate for each sport, so playing a lot of soccer will level you up in that event only. Fans are your overall profile progress tracker, earn enough and you get moved up across divisions that unlock new costumes for your Champion, but that's about it. Finally, you also earn coins, which are used in the shop to buy new outfits and sport items. The latter is important, because in order to actually use more than the starting power-ups, you must buy new items. This includes new rackets for tennis, soccer balls, guns for the shooting range, and so forth. Each new item you buy offers one of the three power-ups and with either increased charge or duration. After a few hours of play it is easy to unlock at least the three basic power-up items for each event, and that works fine for friendly split-screen multiplayer or competitions between friends online.

Kinect Sports Rivals

Or, you can also use the in-game micro-transactions to speed up the process. Because these sport items are relatively expensive, players that want to compete globally with the best gear will need to grind events. To unlock the most powerful versions of the power-ups, it is easily feasible to spend tens of hours playing the sport events, and the game definitely feels skewed towards micro-transaction purchases for players that want to compete globally by using the best equipment. So take that for what it is - likely a non-factor for most players.

While Kinect Sports Rivals offers enough fun activities, the issues with Kinect motion tracking remains a hindering factor in many events, as has been mentioned. The camera needs to see your full body at all times, even when feet aren't involved such as in shooting or wake racing. If you step out of optimal view, the game will intrusively remind the players to step into a better location - without pausing the game. It's rather an annoying distraction mid-race that will definitely cost you. In split-screen local multiplayer, the game also complains in a similar fashion if the players are too close together, again disrupting the experience without pausing.

Multiplayer is one of the key aspects of a game subtitled Rivals. All stats and leaderboards are accessed via a companion application called Kinect Sports Rivals Hub. It's a wholly separate app on your dashboard and can be launched independently of the game. Here, you can track all your scores globally or amongst friends, broken down by event and further by location. While staring at standings is fun, you'll be more interested in the ability to invite players for direct head to head online matches, or as mentioned play locally with a friend.

Kinect Sports Rivals

The game also offers asynchronous multiplayer with the Rivals system. The main menu will automatically recommend Rivals to challenge from your friends list or global standings, letting you play an event to set a score and then send the results. Your friends will then get prompts to accept the Rival invitation and try to beat your score. Should they succeed, the challenge returns to you and so forth. Like Forza Motorsport 5, your Champion is stored in the cloud, so they will actually appear in other players' games and compete on your behalf.

With regards to presentation, Kinect Sports Rivals looks solid in HD. There's nothing particularly standout about the visual presentation or effects, but all sports run at a steady framerate and offer a vibrant color palette. Character animations are smooth and respond to player movements in real time. The great licensed soundtrack is worth mentioning, as it includes some modern techno tracks to get you motivated. The loading times with our digital download version of the game were noticeably elongated.

As the Xbox One aims to captivate the hardcore gaming audience with the likes of Titanfall and Ryse, there is still a market for players that want a more casual, multiplayer friendly experience. Kinect Sports Rivals is clearly aimed at such an audience, as were Rare's previous Xbox 360 titles. With six sports games, clean presentation and extensive multiplayer options, the developers have certainly hit the mark. However, some sports fall short, in both design and Kinect 2.0 tracking. For a full priced title, Rivals doesn't offer a whole lot, but there is potentially limitless replay value here. If you're seeking an Xbox One title to impress your non-gaming friends with, Kinect Sports Rivals could be that game. Following a stumble or spectacular wipeout, you'll join friends in laughter, almost forgetting it was caused by a Kinect tracking issue.

Our ratings for Kinect Sports Rivals on Xbox One out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
Presentation
80
Colorful visuals and a rocking soundtrack. Uninteresting stereotypical characters and voice acting.
Gameplay
64
The sport activities are well designed, though they certainly don't push any creative limits. Kinect tracking itself remains probably the biggest drawback.
Single Player
70
There's only six sport events, but many offer a few courses to get through. The short story campaign does its best to give the game some personality and a reason to play through every event at least a few times. AI rarely puts up a challenge.
Multiplayer
81
The rivals system and asynchronous multiplayer has already been done with Microsoft's other games, but it works just as well here. Playing locally is entertaining for all involved.
Performance
75
Issues with Kinect tracking aside, the game runs without any problems. Loading times can be quite lengthy.
Overall
72
Kinect Sports Rivals is solid enough to get players moving, and provides entertainment when competing against friends. As much as the game may try, however, the limitations of Kinect is its biggest rival.
Comments
Kinect Sports Rivals
Kinect Sports Rivals box art Platform:
Xbox One
Our Review of Kinect Sports Rivals
72%
Good
The Verdict:
Game Ranking
Kinect Sports Rivals is ranked #1042 out of 1957 total reviewed games. It is ranked #77 out of 152 games reviewed in 2014.
1041. Evil Within
PlayStation 4
1042. Kinect Sports Rivals
1043. Charlie Murder
Xbox 360
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Screenshots

Kinect Sports Rivals
16 images added Apr 6, 2014 18:25
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