Kinect Sports: Season Two Review
Microsoft has come out with a sequel to their sports game to show off the Kinect. In this game you'll get to play Football, Golf, Darts, Skiing, Baseball, and Tennis. As you play the different games you're going to be able to unlock difficulties to increase the experience and also the challenge.
Graphically this game looks exactly like the first, with the exception of the change in sporting equipment. Everything was clearly done, and the informational videos told you exactly what you need to know to get the job done in the game that you're currently trying to play.
The sounds of the game were for the most part hit songs from different eras, when you did something good, and an announcer of some sort to tell you what's currently going on in the game.
The controls of the game involved your body, but for some reason I felt that they were worse than they were in the first game. Trying to do the actions to serve a tennis ball, I could never get the Kinect to see exactly what I was doing, and as a result I never felt comfortable in that aspect. There were other games that suffered from the same disconnect I felt, but not to that large of a degree.
So you have all these sports games, and to be honest there's only one that I would recommend coming back to, and that's Darts. The simplest one is the best one to play because you can figure out what the game is expecting and then play as if you're playing the real thing. Now for the other games.
Let's start first with Football, it's anything but football. You have 4 plays to march down the entire field, there's no such thing as a first down. You're either going to have to score a touchdown, kick a field goal, or I'm guessing turn it over on downs. You're going to have these different passing indicators that will light up when its the correct time to throw it to a receiver, but I felt as if sometimes my throwing motions didn't get the ball going in the correct direction. There's also the fact that you've got to squat before each play, and sometimes if you squat too soon it didn't register. There's also the fact that you couldn't play defense in the game, so you were at complete mercy of the game.
Now lets hit up baseball. This is yet another broken game. I do get that they wanted it to be cute and cool to have indicators tell you which type of pitch the batter was bad at hitting, but it makes no logical sense for a left-handed person to have to constantly pitch with both hands depending on the batter. There's also the fact that even if you got it right it wasn't going to equal to much. The fielding mechanic was also screwy. I understand that there's an achievement for bobbling the ball and then catching it, but I never felt comfortable with that mechanic. There's also the fact that its a severely shorten game when it comes to innings, which is probably for the best, as when I played against a human opponent the actual inning would take about 8 runs bare minimum before a change in sides.
I've already hit a bit on tennis, but overall it just feels a bit sloppy. I do like the overhead slam feel, but other than that the game doesn't really like I wanted it to feel.
The other games golf and skiing did what they were suppose to do, but once again I felt that the controls weren't tight enough to make them overly enjoyable. There are also some challenges to try to extend the game, but to be honest you can get through those rather quickly, and then you're left with the game again. A good thing that each of these games should have had is more options, more than setting the difficulty. I would have love to change up dart system, to change up inning numbers, to be able to play defense, to have more of a game than a bunch of half done carnival games. So with that I've got to give this game a 5.7 out of 10.
