Kinect Sports: Season Two

Kinect Sports: Season Two is a perfectly fine collection of sports themed mini - games. Some of these sports work better than others, but as a whole the package ends up being perfectly competent. Each themed mini-game varies in terms of it's accuracy when it comes to the portrayal of the actual sport it's supposed to be mimicking.

Football is surprisingly fun for what it is. Sure there are only six plays to choose from, and sure it's an incredible simple game, but it ends up being a surprising amount of fun. Baseball is fairly fun, even if it's not even accurate in the slightest. Baseball consists of a two inning game, with incredibly simplified mechanics. How much fun is had with Baseball is purely dependent upon the skill of the AI. Baseball felt too random to be considered a good game in the package. After baseball we comes to Darts. To say that Darts is the worst sport in the box would be an understatement. Darts is poor on almost every level. The precise motion needed to play is simply not feasible with the Kinect. Far too many times darts would land on the opposite side of the board from where they were aimed. On top of the poor accuracy of the Kinect, Darts is also excruciatingly boring until the very end of the game. 95% of a game of darts is aiming for the twenty point square. Moving past Darts we find Golf. Now Golf isn't necessarily bad, it's simply mediocre. The controls work fine until you have to putt the ball. Putting takes more fineness than the Kinect can handle. The golf courses all look fine, if not a little generic, and for what it is, Golf plays fine. Don't go in expecting a AAA golf simulation. My favorite sport of the bunch is next, Skiing. Skiing on Kinect Sports: Season Two is a complete blast. The controls are responsive and easy to learn, the tracks supply a fair amount of challenge and are fun to look at as you blaze down the mountain. On the higher difficulty in particular skiing becomes quite a bit of fun. I only wish there were more tracks than the included three (There are three more as DLC). Tennis is the last sport rounding out the package, and it's good just not great. It feels like the developers took the Table Tennis mode out of the previous title, and threw some paint on it. It works, however like Golf, don't expect simulation style accuracy. The controls are simple and easy to understand, it's just not a lot of fun to play. I would much rather spend time skiing or playing Football.

When you add up the whole contents of the package it ends up being a perfectly average mix of sports themed mini-games. There are high points like Skiing, Football, and Baseball, and of course there are low points like Darts. To be honest, several sports in the first Kinect Sports were more fun than most of the sports features in Season Two. Track & Field, and Beach Volleyball come to mind. Overall, Kinect Sports Season Two is a perfectly acceptable collection of sports mini-games, with added features like Voice Commands making it slightly easier to navigate than the previous title.