Kinect Nat Geo TV Review

These three activities are essentially all that you’ll get to do besides watching TV as you normally would. It might work well for kids, or it might not, depending on their desire to be active while watching. The interactive parts can be turned off in the menus so you could in fact just watch the shows. The minigames repeat multiple times per episode, so repetition does become a factor. All of the activities do have a score associated with them, so there is some replay value if you want to attempt the high score. As mentioned, some of the minigames can be difficult – not only because of Kinect and the precision often required, but the harsh scoring system. Making just a few mistakes will likely cost you the points needed for the gold medal, so again the game suddenly becomes less kid-friendly.

The games can be played outside of the TV episodes by launching the Party Animal mode. Here, the same games you’ve played while watching are accessible without video content. The bad design decision appears with the fact that you can’t select what minigames to play, as they are all sort of cycled through. They can also all be enjoyed with a partner in co-op, but with that score requirements for medals are increased, making the game that much more difficult and requiring both participants to play well to earn a decent score.

For the $30 asking price, the eight episodes included may not offer much value. However, new copies of the game also have National Geographic TV episode pass. This provides one year of access to more than 20 TV episodes of the actual TV show, so it comes recommended to fans and adds further value to the package. However, these episodes don’t include any interactive content and also don’t focus on kid-friendly content like the ones in the game.

Kinect Nat Geo TV is a good start to the Microsoft’s apparent interactive TV push. The activities included are basic yet may be too tough for younger audiences, and the TV episodes provide great educational value. Kinect integration is uninspired and often needlessly tiring, which begs the question of why this is a Kinect-required title. If you have kids who love learning about animals and you’re ready to help them achieve some high scores, give Kinect Nat Geo TV a go.