E3 2011 Upcoming Kinect Games List

We've tried to round up all of the currently announced games (as of E3 2011) for Kinect we could find. Most are scheduled for a 2011 release, but a few will trickle over to 2012. There will also surely be some that make it out before the end of the year we're not even aware of yet. This is just a quick reference list to show you what is coming up for Holiday 2011.

Blackwater - Shooter from 505 Games and Zombie Studios based on controversial military contractor. Fall 2011 release.

Cheerleading (Working Title) - 2K Play. Fall 2011 release.

Child of Eden - Ubisoft, Q Entertainment - Rail shooter that mixes action and music with stylish visuals. Kinect controls are optional. June 14, 2011 release.

Codename D - Grasshopper, Microsoft - Use your body as a weapon to fight through amusement park full of monsters. TBA release.

Dance Central 2 - Harmonix, Microsoft - Sequel to hit game from Kinect launch. Will offer simultaneous multiplayer. Fall 2011 release.

Fable: The Journey - Lionhead, Microsoft - On-rails game set in Fable universe. TBA release.

Forza Motorsport 4 - Turn 10, Microsoft - Kinect used for head tracking, ogling cars outside of races. Racing gameplay will still use normal controllers. October 11, 2011 release.

Fruit Ninja Kinect - Halfbrick Studios, Microsoft - XBLA version of Fruit Ninja with Kinect controls. Fall 2011 release.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier - Ubisoft - Use Kinect to customize weapons, shoot on firing range. TBA 2012 release.

Haunt - NanaOn Sha, Microsoft - Haunted house game aimed at families. TBA release.

Hole in the Wall - Ludia, Microsoft - XBLA version of popular (and humiliating) "Human Tetris" TV show. TBA 2011 release.

Hulk Hogan's Main Event - Panic Button, Majesco - Motion controlled pro wrestling where you not only perform moves, but have to create a persona and work the crowd. Fall 2011 release.

Just Dance 3 - Ubisoft - Popular Wii dancing game makes its debut on Kinect. Fall 2011 release.

Kinect Disneyland Adventures - Frontier Dev, Microsoft - Action/adventure/mini-game collection where you explore Disneyland and experience the rides. Fall 2011.

Kinect Sports Season Two - BigPark, Microsoft - Baseball, football, skiing, golf, and more. Fall 2011.

Kinect Star Wars - Terminal Reality, LucasArts, Microsoft - Pod racing, lightsaber battles, and more. TBA 2011.

Mass Effect 3 - BioWare, EA - Uses Kinect for voice commands of your squad. Early 2012 release.

Michael Phelps: Push the Limit - Blitz Games, 505 - Kinect swimming game. Your guess is as good as ours as to if it'll be any fun. Fall 2011 release.

miCoach - THQ - Kinect fitness and training game. Early 2012 release.

Minecraft - Mojang, Microsoft - Not a port, but a new version of Minecraft made specifically for Kinect. TBA 2011.

MotionSports Adrenaline - Ubisoft - An extreme sports Kinect game, which seems like a good idea considering how awesome hang gliding was (and how awful everything else was) in the first MotionSports. Fall 2011.

Nickelodeon Dance - High Voltage, 2K Play - A dancing game for kids with Nick Jr. characters. Fall 2011.

PowerUp Heroes - Ubisoft - Fighting game that dresses your Avatar in different superhero outfits, each with different powers. Fall 2011.

Project Draco - Grounding, Microsoft - Shooter featuring flying dragons. TBA release.

Raving Rabbids Alive & Kicking - Ubisoft - Off the wall Rabbids mini-game collection / party game. Fall 2011.

Rise of Nightmares - SEGA - Survival horror game. Not many details yet. TBA release.

Ryse - Crytek, Microsoft - First person sword fighting. TBA release.

Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster - Double Fine, Warner Bros. - Minigame collection for kids. Could be amazing ... for kids. Fall 2011.

Steel Battalion Heavy Armor - From Software, Capcom - Sequel to giant robot game that used 40+ button controller. Now uses no buttons with Kinect. TBA release.

The Gunstringer - Twisted Pixel, Microsoft - Third-person-shooter where you control character with left hand, shoot with right hand. TBA release.

Sims 3 Pets - The Sims Studio, EA - The Sims, now with pets and Kinect. Fall 2011.

UFC Personal Trainer - THQ - UFC-themed fitness / training game. June 2011.

Wipeout: In the Zone - Activision - Run through obstacle courses based on hit TV show with your avatar. June 2011.

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2 - Ubisoft - Sequel to best exercise game from Kinect launch. Fall 2011.

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PowerUp Heroes Review (X360 Kinect)

PowerUp Heroes is a Kinect game that makes you feel like a superhero. Or, if superheroes aren't your thing, it makes you feel sort of like Mega Man mixed with Ryu from Street Fighter with some Goku from DBZ thrown in. You perform punches and kicks and special moves, and when you beat up enemies you take their powers to use in the next fight. As a kid, I would have loved this. Heck, as an adult it is pretty darn entertaining still. The fun only lasts for a few hours, though, as there just isn't very much content here, but PowerUp Heroes is still worth a look.Game Details Kinect Sensor Required Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Longtail Studios ESRB Rating: “E10" for Everyone 10+ Genre: Fighting / Action Pros: Fun Kinect gameplay makes you feel like a super hero; nice menus and overall presentation Cons: Not much content; not always responsive enough

The story in PowerUp Heroes tells of an evil alien force comes to Earth. A good alien hero comes to Earth but crash lands and gives his special power suit to the nearest human he can find. That human is you, or at lest your Xbox 360 Avatar, so you put on the suit and get to fighting bad guys. When you defeat an enemy you take their suit, which gives you new powers to choose from. You select two suits before every fight and can switch between them at will. Even mid-combo. So, just like Mega Man, you beat up a bunch of dudes, steal their powers, and save the day. Good times.

Unfortunately, there isn't much content here. It only takes a couple of hours to collect all 20 suits and save the world. There is local multiplayer as well as online multiplayer, which does help, but good luck actually finding anyone to play against online. Local multiplayer works just fine as long as you don't get too wild and have a big enough space for two people to flail around without hitting each other.

The gameplay is set up like a fighting game. You and your opponent have a health bar, and the first one to win two rounds wins the fight. The moves you perform are all surprisingly intuitive as you just stand in front of Kinect and punch and kick to make your character do the same. Special moves are different for each suit, but require motions like a quick movement with your hand to throw an energy ball, a "Kamehameha"-type motion for a fireball, raising your hands above your head to throw a big energy ball (sort of like a Spirit Bomb ...), whipping your hand forward to crack a lightning whip, and much more. Defensive moves include stepping left or right to dodge attacks, or QTE-style pop ups where you match a specific motion to block attacks. It is all rather simple, but it does work really surprisingly well and is pretty satisfying to punch and kick and throw energy attacks around like a comic book hero.

For the most part the game is easy enough that even with some hiccups where Kinect doesn't do what you want, it doesn't really affect the gameplay. At least, for the first half of it. Late in the game when you've beaten all of the enemies once and have to fight through much tougher versions of them a second time, though, it can be tougher to react quickly enough or Kinect might read your movements wrong, which can lead to some frustration. It isn't so much that it is terribly difficult, but it is definitely a bit of a jump from how easy the game is the first time you fight everyone. You get used to it.

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Kinect Disneyland Adventures Review (X360 Kinect)

Kinect Disneyland Adventures is easily one of the best family and kid-friendly games on the market. It captures the unique feeling of awe and wonder that only Disney can create and lets you do it all from the comfort of your own living room. With the unique controls that Kinect offers, you can explore Disneyland and interact with the attractions and characters in intuitive ways. It is a rather simple game overall that really isn't for the grown up hardcore gamer crowd (unless you are as crazy about Disney as you are about videogames), but kids will go absolutely bonkers over it. And for parents, watching your kids have so much fun is pretty darn fun too.Game Details Kinect Sensor Required Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Developer: Frontier Dev ESRB Rating: “E" for Everyone Genre: Adventure Pros: Great re-creation of Disneyland; intuitive controls; lots of rides and hidden stuff; kids will love it Cons: Pretty simple overall; movement controls are awkward

Kinect Disneyland Adventures is a pretty simple game, really. The Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California has been re-created as accurately as possible in the game and you are free to explore it. If you've ever been to Disneyland, everything should be where you remember. Every bench. Every churro stand. Every souvenir shop. Every ride. It is pretty much all here. There are also dozens of Disney characters wandering around the park for you to interact with as well, and every conversation begins and ends with either a wave or you actually saying "Hello" and "Goodbye". There is plenty of hidden stuff as well like hidden Mickeys and special things you can interact with using a magic wand. And you have a camera you can take pictures with all of the characters with where you have to copy their pose for the picture. It is all super cute and fun and pure Disney.

There are more than 20 rides that you can go on as well. They aren't the real rides (which would have been boring to just sit and watch) and are instead mini-games inspired by the rides. The Matterhorn is a bobsled race down the mountain where you have to dodge obstacles and avoid a Yeti. Each ride also has multiple parts to it you play separately, so the Peter Pan ride starts out with a flying level where you follow Tinkerbell to Neverland, and then the next level you sword fight with Captain Hook. The mini-games are all pretty fun and offer unlimited respawns so you never see a "Game Over" screen. It is fun and easy and great for kids. And you can play all of the rides with two players, which makes things more fun.

A nice thing about Kinect Disneyland Adventures, though, is that it offers a great interactive map that lets you fast travel anywhere you want, so you don't actually have to do that much awkward running around. You won't find all of the hidden interactive stuff this way, but you'll get to go on all of the rides in record time. And you won't ever have to wait in line, so unlike a real trip to Disneyland where waiting in line takes up 90% of your time, this game is all about the fun stuff.

Graphics & Sound

Visually, Kinect Disneyland Adventures is a really nice looking game. The park is really nicely detailed and looks fantastic. One thing I noticed immediately is that while there are other people at the park with you, it isn't anywhere near as crowded as the real thing. Another bonus to playing the game versus going to the real park. The Disney characters look good - big and cartoony and mascot-y, but pretty much just like they really do at Disneyland.

The sound is very good as well. Disney theme music all over the place. Solid voice acting from all of the characters. It looks and sounds just right.

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Kinect Sports Season Two Review (X360 Kinect)

We've played a lot of sports and mini-game collections with Kinect and a main problem with most of them is that the activities they chose for the game just weren't fun and / or didn't work. Third-party games are one thing, but I never expected a first-party Microsoft game to suffer from this problem, but that is exactly my issue with Kinect Sports Season Two. They just picked bad sports for this game and it isn't really all that fun. Darts, football, skiing, tennis, baseball, and golf. Some work okay. Some don't. Some just aren't fun even when they work. Kinect Sports Season Two is a disappointment.Game Details Kinect Sensor Required Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Developer: Rare, Big Park ESRB Rating: "E" for Everyone Genre: Sports Pros: Nice presentation; tennis; golf; voice controls Cons: They picked the wrong sports for this game; load times

The six sports presented in Kinect Sports Season Two - baseball, football, darts, golf, skiing, and tennis - all play somewhat reasonably like their real-world counterparts. The problem is that some of them just aren't fun here and I can't see any of them really drawing you back to play them more than once the way bowling, boxing, and table tennis did in the original Kinect Sports. It has to be noted that the original Kinect Sports had some duds as well - volleyball, soccer, and track & field - but it did also have those three other standout sports that made it worth returning to weeks and months after release. Kinect Sports Season Two, on the other hand, doesn't really have that one great thing that keeps you coming back.

Baseball - Baseball lets you pitch, hit, and even make plays in the field. Hitting is straightforward where you get into a batter's stance in front of Kinect and swing away. Pitching tracks the speed of your arm when you make a throwing motion to determine how fast the pitch is, and throwing in a sort of arc is a curve ball. Fielding is rather simple where you just have to hold your hand at a spot on the screen to line the fielder up before the ball gets there. Most hits you give up, however, don't even give you the option to make a play as the ball usually flies through gaps in your swiss cheese defense. Being on the pitching / fielding side kind of sucks because you feel really helpless and can't do much other than let the game play itself. Batting is much more fun, and it works okay, but due to the inherent lag of Kinect, the timing is way off on hitting so it isn't very satisfying. Running in place to make your batter run to first (all of the other base running is automatic) is obnoxious as well. The way Kinect was used in Nicktoons MLB was honestly a bit more fun.

Tennis - Tennis is one of the better sports in the game. Your player moves to an appropriate spot on the court automatically, but you still have to turn your body to be in the right position for backhands or forehands. You can also direct your shots left or right depending on how you swing, add power by stepping into the shot, and even do drop shots. There is quite a bit of disconnect between what you're actually doing versus what appears onscreen, though. The game sort of plays itself as long as your timing is decent. You are usually better off swinging early rather than trying for accurate timing. Once you figure out the rhythm of the game (swinging way early), it does play fairly well and like I said, it is satisfying when you hit a shot exactly where you wanted. You can also argue with the umpire using Kinect voice controls, which is always a hoot.

Darts - Real-world darts is fun. Videogame darts is not fun. In Kinect Sports darts you move your hand around to line up a cursor on the dart board. By pulling your hand toward your body, you lock the cursor into that position. Then, by flicking your hand forward like you are throwing a dart, you throw at the board. The speed of your hand moving forward determines where the dart actually ends up - high or low or dead on to where you were aiming. Playing with any real accuracy is kind of a pain, though. I can hit 20's all day long in this game, but hitting doubles or triples with any regularity is a much bigger problem. Part of it has to do with the janky way you "aim", but also because Kinect is far from perfect at reading the speed of your hand when you throw. I'd rather play real darts.

Football - Football is a huge mess. It is too easy and way too boring. You snap the ball and then throw to a receiver running a route down the field. When they catch the ball, you have to run in place and step side to side to dodge defenders. It isn't fun. At all. And I hate games that make you run in place. Not just here, but all Kinect games that do it. It is just stupid.

Golf - Golf is the best of the KSS2 sports, but still held back by the Kinect itself. It is another game that almost seems to play itself. Sure, you can select different clubs and where you want to aim, and the power is determined by how hard you swing, but the courses are designed in such a way that they are incredibly easy. It takes effort to not make at least par on most holes, and birdies should come pretty easy once you have a hole or two behind you to learn the controls. There is something fun and satisfying about taking full golf swings in your living room, but all of the nuances and little touches that make real golf interesting (and difficult) in real life are completely missing. Tiger Woods 12 on PS3 Move is a much, much more satisfying motion controlled golf game.

Skiing - Skiing is, well, skiing. You lean left or right to turn, crouch to build up speed, and jump to fly through the air. It is better than the skiing in any other Kinect game so far, but not all that fun. It does control fine, but after you make a run or two it loses its luster.

I think my biggest problem with the sports in Kinect Sports Season Two, and all of the other sports and minigame collections really, is that when you dissect everything down into simple parts that will actually work with Kinect, a lot of the fun of that sport disappears. When Kinect is used well, it can be amazingly fun. It has limitations, though, and when real sports and games are dumbed down and simplified enough to actually work within those limitations, they aren't all that fun anymore even if they might work with the motion controls okay. Just being functional, while a major success compared to some Kinect stinkers released so far, isn't enough. Games need to be fun too.

Specifically to KSS2, Kinect football is awful from the ground up. I thought last year's MotionSports title would have made that clear. Tennis and golf, while fun and the best of the bunch, are too easy and basically play themselves. Skiing is boring past your first couple of runs down the hill. Baseball is too dumbed down and, frankly, the delay between you swinging and it registering in the game screws the timing up so bad it just isn't fun because you never feel like you're actually making contact. Never mind how awful pitching and fielding are. And darts just plain will never work in a videogame because aiming with a cursor is the dumbest thing ever, yet that is really the only way to play darts in a game. They just plain picked the wrong sports for this one.

Presentation

One area where Kinect Sports Season Two does hold up well, however, is the presentation. It absolutely looks and sounds and feels like a bigger better, more polished sequel to Kinect Sports (until you actually start playing). Your Avatar is the star of all of these sports and looks good. The stadiums you play in also look nice. There is nothing super detailed anywhere, but it all fits the tone and theme and looks nice. The menus are easy to navigate as well. Also, like the first Kinect Sports, licensed music plays during games at appropriate times and is a nice touch that makes the whole experience feel more like a real sporting event than a game.

One issue is load times, however. There are some strangely long load times in this game, even when the disc is installed to your hard drive. I'm talking a full minute wait for an event to start, and some long load times between golf holes. It isn't ever consistent, though. Between some games, or some golf holes the load times will be super fast. Other times, it'll go slow.

Bottom Line

Kinect Sports Season Two is a letdown. It features some of the best presentation and most functional menus of any Kinect title, but drops the ball when it came to choosing sports that are actually fun to play with motion controls. We all know videogame football, baseball, golf, and tennis can be a blast, but they have to be significantly dumbed down to really work with Kinect and the results just aren't very fun for very long. Darts was a mistake from the word go. And skiing is always going to be sort of boring when you aren't A) actually in the mountains, or B) able to perform ridiculously huge unrealistic videogame tricks. Kinect Sports Season Two is a collection of watered down sports that just aren't fun. The original Kinect Sports wasn't perfect either, but it had some great standouts that kept you coming back. Kinect Sports Season Two doesn't have those one or two great activities that you'll want to play over and over again that would make it worth owning. It can be fun in short doses, and with friends of course, but won't hold your interest long term. Rent it.

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Kinect Joy Ride Review (X360)

Kart racer Kinect Joy Ride is one of the easiest Kinect launch games to jump in and play and immediately know exactly what to do. You just hold your hands out like you're holding a pretend steering wheel and away you go. You don't even have to brake or accelerate, it does it all for you. Because of this over simplicity, though, Joy Ride also happens to be one of the more shallow and uninteresting launch games. It just isn't fun to play for very long.Game Details Publisher: Microsoft Developer: BigPark Inc. ESRB Rating: “E" for Everyone Genre: Kart Racing Pros: Super easy to play; custom paint jobs Cons: Menus; not a lot of gameplay depth; gets old about 5 races in

First, a history lesson. Joy Ride was first shown at E3 2009 and was originally meant to be a free to download XBLA game starring Xbox 360 Avatars. It would focus on custom user created content and paid premium DLC. At E3 2010 it was revealed Joy Ride had been turned into a full-priced Kinect launch game.

Kinect Joy Ride offers a fair bit of variety. There are normal race modes, stunt modes, drag races, and more. Smash mode is kind of interesting because you just get to break a bunch of stuff littered around an arena. The battle race mode feels just like a Mario Kart clone, complete with the same sort of weapon set. There are a handful of different environments that courses for each mode are laid out on.

There are a number of vehicles in the game, but none of them really feel any different from the rest. Unlocking new cars just isn't a thrill because there isn't ever a real feeling of advancement. They all feel the same.

One feature I admit I enjoyed way too much was the custom paint option. This lets you paint your car any color you want by holding an object in front of the Kinect camera. I scanned anything I had handy, and it copied the colors perfectly. A bright neon green pack of Ernie Ball Regular Slinky guitar strings, a bright red Stratocaster guitar, a purple and gold Minnesota Vikings blanket, etc. and it worked great.

Kinect Joy Ride supports multiplayer as well for most of the modes. It can keep track of as many as 8 players, but only two can play at once. To switch players, someone new just steps in front of the camera and Kinect will recognize them as a new player.

Gameplay

This would all be awesome if Joy Ride actually played halfway decent, but it doesn't. The controls are easy to figure out - you hold your hands out in front of you to grab the "steering wheel", and turn your hands like you are turning a wheel to make your car turn, lean your body into turns to drift, lean your body while your car is in mid-air to do stunts, and pull the "wheel" towards your body to build up boost and then push it away to use the boost. But it isn't fun! The turning controls are unresponsive and calibration is wonky even though I'm playing with the same setup every other Kinect game worked fine in (which means it is a software problem, not hardware). It also feels odd to not have any speed control. Not that it matters, though, because the tracks are a mile wide and you aren't penalized for driving off road anyway. Each of the various game types are fun to try once or twice, but at that point you have seen pretty much all the actual gameplay the game has to offer. It has the depth of a half-dried rain puddle. It is very easy to pick up and play, but doesn't hold your attention for very long.

The menus are also a bit of a problem in that there are just too many of them. Before and after a race you have no less than 5 screens (on each end) to cycle through. It is pretty ridiculous. I'm also not fond of the way your cursor automatically snaps to menu options. Selecting things with Kinect feels more natural when you actually have to move your hand to select stuff. In Joy Ride your cursor jumps around to whatever you're relatively close to, which just feels awkward if you're used to playing other games where the cursor isn't quite as sticky. A small complaint, sure, but something that is immediately noticeable and never feels quite right.

Graphics

Graphically, Kinect Joy Ride looks okay. Everything is bright and colorful, but very simple in terms of textures.

Sound

The sound is also merely okay. Okay racing sound effects, and okay music. Okay.

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Just Dance 3 Review (X360 Kinect)

Dancing games have come a long way from the seemingly random steps of Dance Dance Revolution. Thanks to Kinect's fully body motion tracking, dance games are much more realistically choreographed and not just insane numbers of steps like DDR tends to be. Even with Kinect and accurate tracking of all your moves, however, there is still some wiggle room for what direction a game wants to go. Some games try to replicate the DDR experience (DanceMasters). Some games try to teach you club-worthy routines (Dance Central). Some games just want you to have fun, which is where Just Dance 3 comes in. Just Dance 3 is sort of laid back and easy, often times hilarious because the dance moves you're doing are anything but "club worthy", but it is also really, really fun because of it. Find out all of the details here in our full review.Game Details Kinect Sensor Required Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Paris ESRB Rating: “E10" for Everyone 10+ Genre: Dancing Pros: Nice presentation; good song list; unlockable content; laid back scoring makes it fun Cons: 4-player isn't going to happen for most people

Features

Just Dance has been tearing up Wii sales charts since its debut in 2009. Now the series makes its debut on Kinect with Just Dance 3, with different controls from the Wii-mote waggling of past games, of course. Kinect offers full body controls, and Just Dance 3 takes full advantage of it with accurate motion tracking and fun routines.

The menus are pretty much a direct copy of Dance Central's menu system (hey, Kinect menus are pretty important, so might as well copy the best) and work really great. The whole up or down hand motion to choose menu items, and then a left or right hand swipe to select it is pretty much perfect.

In addition to single and two-player modes, which work great, Just Dance 3 also offers up to 4-player simultaneous gameplay. This is a first for Kinect and exceeds what many folks thought possible, but it also shows why it hasn't happened before. The motion tracking for 4 players is pretty inconsistent and, frankly, good luck finding a big enough space to actually fit four people clearly in front of Kinect where you aren't smacking each other in the face. It is hard enough for a lot of people to play 1-player Kinect games in small rooms. I can't imagine most people actually getting 4-player JD3 to work right.

Just Dance 3 for Kinect (and PS3) also features an exclusive Create Mode where you can record your own dance routines with Kinect. You can then play them later with friends, or even share them online with other players. Unfortunately, you can only share a handful of select songs online and not the whole track list, but it is a nice feature nonetheless.

As far as the actual dancing gameplay goes, Just Dance 3 hits a sweet spot between making you actually feel like you're dancing, but also never being too serious or judgemental. You play by mirroring the moves an on-screen dancer. There are also little cue cards that pop up in the corner to show you what you're supposed to do next, but they are usually pretty vague so it is best to just follow what the on-screen dancer is doing. This means your first trip through a song might not be very accurate, but you'll learn and be able to do it all better the next time.

The best part about JD3 is that the dance routines are meant to just be goofy and fun and not super serious. Playing air guitar or striking anime superhero poses (among other silly moves), along with lots of hand waving and hip shaking is the name of the game here. And it is really fun. The scoring in the game almost seems like an afterthought. You just dance along as best you can, enjoy the music, and have fun. You won't get scolded of booed off stage if you mess up. You just keep dancing. You do earn XP-style points that let you "level up", which unlocks new playlists and dances based on your performance, but getting decent scores even on your first time through a song isn't all that difficult.

Because of this, Dance Central 3 is the most immediately accessible and arguably the most fun dance game on Kinect. The dance moves are goofy, the scoring is super lenient, and the game is flat out fun.

The presentation is fairly simple, but nice. The on-screen dancers are painted with bright, neon colors that make them easy to see and follow. The UI is clean and easy to read. And the backgrounds usually match up with the specific song you're playing. Everything is sharp and great looking.

The sound is, as expected from a music / dancing game, great. The 40 songs on-disc, plus a number of DLC tracks, cover a wide range of genres and tastes and there is more than likely something that everyone will enjoy.

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Dance Central 2 Review (X360 Kinect)

Dance Central 2 is one of the first Kinect sequels to hit market from the original lineup of games that hit in November 2010. It follows the tried-and-true sequel formula of bigger, better, more to a "T", which is a good thing because while the gameplay of the original DC was good, it was lacking in the features department. Dance Central 2 fills out the features list with impressive new modes and just plain more "stuff" overall while the gameplay is even sharper and better than ever. Dance Central 2 is a great follow-up and stands as one of the best Kinect games overall.Game Details Kinect Sensor Required Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Developer: Harmonix ESRB Rating: “T" for Teen Genre: Dancing Pros: Great interface; nice presentation; song list; lots of modes; multiplayer Cons: Story in career is unnecessary

Dance Central 2 is a bigger, better Dance Central, which is a good thing. It features 40+ songs on disc, plus DLC, plus the ability to import the tracks from Dance Central 1 as well.

Voice commands have been added for many menu functions so you can select songs, being gameplay, pause, navigate menus, and more just with voice controls. That is if you don't like the motion controls for menus, which we actually love and gushed over in our DC1 review. The simple up or down to choose items and then a swipe of your hand to select it still hasn't been topped as far as Kinect menus go.

Features

In addition to a standard quick play mode, the Break It Down mode that teaches you the dance routine for a song, has been improved to let you skip over steps you already know, which is a big improvement over the somewhat plodding pace of the original. The fitness mode also returns with new routines (10-minute and up to 40-minute sessions) and you can also turn on a calorie counter that works across all modes.

Multiplayer was sadly missing in DC1, but it is present in DC2. You can dance cooperatively, as well as competitively. Competitive dancing is pretty crazy since it features solo sections where you bust out your best moves and your opponent just has to watch and wait for their turn, and there are also Free 4 All sections where a bunch of moves flash up on screen that you can perform in any order, and the person that performs it first, and best, gets bonus points. There isn't any sort of online mode, but we really don't mind since online lag would pretty much kill the experience. Also, a lot of the fun of multiplayer comes from actually watching your friends dance in front of you, which would be sorely missed playing some stranger on Xbox Live.

A career mode in the form of the Crew Challenge mode where, in typical form, you start out as a young up-and-coming dancer and set out to challenge all of the best dance crews in town. When you beat each two-person crew you earn their respect and move up the ladder until you ultimately use the power of dance to take down a bad guy. Sigh. I don't really need a story mode in a dancing game, particularly not one where you're a spunky newcomer that saves the day with your dancing. It is corny.

What the Crew Challenge does do, though, is introduce you to the dance teams in the game. The two-person crews have a lot of personality and play a big role in the overall game. So much so, in fact, that you actually get attached to your chosen dance partner even though they are little more than an avatar. In a nice touch, a second player can jump in at any point and take over control of your partner, which is great.

Graphics & Sound

Presentation wise, Dance Central 2 looks great. The character models for all of the characters are really nice and the game has a definite sense of style. The environments look nice as well, but the onscreen dancers and the flash cards telling you what the next move is going to be are what you'll usually be focused on. The UI is also clean and easy to read.

Not much to say about the sound, really. Since it is a music / dancing game with licensed tracks, it can't help but sound good.

Bottom Line

All in all, Dance Central 2 is a great Kinect game that builds upon the solid foundation of the original to surpass it in pretty much every way. It has tons of songs, plenty of modes, multiplayer, and makes perfect use of Kinect to let you move and dance in ways that no other control system can match. Dance Central 2 is a near-perfect sequel and stands as one of the best games for Kinect. Buy it.

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2011 Kinect Buy Guide

It has been a year since Kinect was first released on November 4th, 2010. It has been a bit of an up and down year with not much coming out for long stretches, but entering the 2011 Holiday season the new Kinect releases are piling up so fast we can't keep up. Last year we recommended Kinect for a purchase based on the potential it had for good games more than the actual titles that were available at the time. A year later, do we still recommend it? Absolutely, and here's why.

Kinect Is Here To Stay

Kinect isn't going away. It isn't something that if hardcore gamers ignore long enough, it will just disappear. It has sold more than ten million units (the last official sales data from Microsoft is from March 2011, so that number is likely to be a fair bit higher now) in its first year, and you don't just abandon 10-15 million users because some hardcore gamers can't shut up about how much they hate Kinect.

With any new hardware tech, there is always a fear that it won't get a foothold in the marketplace and will be suddenly discontinued, and all of the early adopters of the tech will be left out in the cold with an expensive doorstop (the Nintendo 3DS was kinda looking that way earlier this year ... but things are improving). There was some fear about prospective Kinect buyers that it would fail miserably and they would have wasted $150. No need to worry. As shown above, Kinect is selling just fine and Microsoft isn't going to abandon it.

Considering that the next big Xbox 360 dashboard update was built with Kinect in mind (it still works with normal controls just fine, don't worry), Kinect is going to be around for quite a while.

Kinect Hardware

Check out our Kinect Buyer's Guide for everything you need to know about the hardware. This Holiday season, Kinect is available in a stand-alone package with Kinect Adventures game for $150 (Xbox 360 system required, obviously) as well as a hardware bundle with a 250GB Xbox 360 system along with Kinect Adventures and a download code for the Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do game for $399. A wonderfully fabulous Kinect Star Wars Xbox 360 bundle was supposed to hit Fall 2011 as well, but the Kinect Star Wars game was delayed which put the hardware bundle on hold as well.

Attitude

One thing that needs to be said about Kinect is that you absolutely get more or less out of it depending on your attitude. If you want to hate it, you'll nitpick every little thing and find lots of reasons to hate it. If you want to love it, it is easy to ignore little problems and just have fun with it. This is why it is easy to find lots of YouTube videos of Kinect games not working right, or people making snarky comments about how awful they think it is. They wanted to hate it from the start so, surprise surprise, they hate it now. You have to keep in mind that there are millions of perfectly happy Kinect owners out there not speaking up about it.

Setup Is Important

Also, proper setup of Kinect is absolutely important. If you don't have enough room for it - some games work okay a 6 feet or so, most games need 8-10 feet in front of your TV to work properly - it isn't going to work very well. Likewise, if you don't calibrate your Kinect with the easy to follow built in calibration tools, it isn't going to work right and isn't going to be very fun. When you have a big enough room - and we do not recommend anyone buy Kinect if they don't have space for it (third party peripherals like the Nyko Zoom that are supposed to make Kinect usable in smaller rooms don't really work) - and calibrate it correctly, Kinect will be accurate and easy to use and, most importantly, fun.

You can tell how important setup is just by looking at professional reviews of Kinect games. They typically vary pretty widely in terms of score and overall tone from one site to the next, and it is easy to tell which reviewers had their Kinect set up properly and which ones didn't. Just for the record, we like to think we have a well-calibrated Kinect setup and our reviews are accurate and consistent.

The Games

But all of this is just rhetoric. What about the real reason why you should get a Kinect - the games? The 2011 Holiday season is very busy with new Kinect games, and 2012 is going to be full of new releases as well. An interesting thing to note is that more and more games are coming out with control schemes that let you use both a regular controller and Kinect at the same time. Forza Motorsport4 uses it for head tracking during races, Halo CE Anniversary has a bunch of Kinect voice controls, and 2012 releases Mass Effect 3 and Ghost Recon Future Soldier, among others, will carry the "Better With Kinect" branding that lets you play normally with a controller, but also use Kinect for extra options.

Kinect-only games are the main attraction, of course, so what are they like now with an extra year of development? Improved in just about every way. Developers and publishers have learned from what did and didn't work as far as menus and gameplay interfaces go, and the second generation of Kinect titles are generally head and shoulders above what launched last year.

Dancing Games - Just Dance 3 and Dance Central 2 are both fantastic dancing games. The kid-focused Just Dance Kids 2 from Ubisoft is also coming along with Nickelodeon Dance is on the way from 2K Play. Ubisoft is also publishing The Black Eyed Peas Experience as well.

Action games - The Gunstringer is amazingly fully-featured and super fun and even comes with free DLC and a download code for Fruit Ninja Kinect (which is honestly worth $10 on XBLA by itself).

Survival Horror - Rise of Nightmares is the first "M" for Mature rated Kinect game, and while it does have some quirks and isn't exactly a great game, it is still fun if only because it is the first survival horror Kinect game.

Virtual Pets - Kinectimals was one of our favorite launch games, and the Now With Bears expansion adds several hours of solid new content. It is so cute and saccharine sweet it might give you diabetes, but it is amazingly fun. Fantastic Pets is another solid virtual pet game.

Fitness - Fitness games include the solid UFC Personal Trainer (not a fighting trainer, just a fitness game) and Ubisoft's follow-up to the best Kinect workout game at launch, Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012. Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure is also on the way. You might also consider Body And Brain Connection, which released earlier this year.

Kid-Friendly - There are also a lot of kid-focused games such as Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, PowerUp Heroes, and more based on other kid movies and licenses.

Sports - Also coming are a couple of sequels to sports titles released last Fall - Kinect Sports Season 2 (no worries on whether it'll be good) and MotionSports: Adrenaline. The original MostionSports was pretty rough, save for one part (hang gliding) and it seems like Ubisoft is focusing more on that extreme sports angle with Adrenaline. We're hopeful.

Kinect Disneyland Adventures - Kinect Disneyland Adventures looks like one of the most crazy fun Kinect titles yet. You literally get to explore every square inch of Disneyland and even go on rides. I'm a grown man and I'm excited about it.

There's More - There are a couple dozen more Kinect games hitting this Holiday season ranging from classic game shows like The Price is Right and Family Feud, hunting and fishing games, kid movie games, a Grease dancing game, and much more. See a fairly complete listing of Fall 2011 Kinect games here. There is also a long list of previously released titles not covered in this article which have likely seen price drops. Check out our Kinect Game Reviews section for reviews of Kinect games already out and we'll be adding more new reviews every week as well.

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Kinect Sports Review (X360)

The Wii launched with Wii Sports, and for many people that was all they needed. Heck, after four years the only Wii game I've kept, even after owning a couple dozen others, is Wii Sports. It is fun and still works as good or better than anything since. Microsoft is trying to capture that perfect blend of simplicity, functionality, and accessibility with its own motion controlled sports game for Kinect, Kinect Sports. And they have more than succeeded. Kinect Sports is great. If you buy a Kinect, Kinect Sports should be one of the first games you get to go with it.Game Details Publisher: Microsoft Developer: Rare ESRB Rating: “E" for Everyone Genre: Sports Pros: Great, fun gameplay in most events; good variety of game types; nice presentation Cons: Some sports aren't so hot

Kinect Sports has six event types - bowling, boxing, volleyball, soccer, table tennis, and track & field. There are also sixteen minigames that are different versions of these events. Bowling mini-games include an event where you can use both hands (thus, two balls at once) to try to knock down as many pins as possible within a set time limit. There is also a bowling mode where you try to pick up spares the game sets up for you. A table tennis minigame lets you use two paddles to try and return as many balls as possible as they come at you rapid fire-style. Track & field minigames include things like javelin (and a funny feature is that you can throw it at equipment on the field in the game and break it, tee hee) and discus among others. There is a lot to do in Kinect Sports, and most of it is pretty darn fun. You can play solo or local multiplayer, or even against other players via Xbox Live.

Gameplay

The gameplay is the key part of Kinect Sports, though. When it works well, it is amazingly fun. In events where it doesn't work well, it is kind of a drag. For the most part, however, the various events are a lot of fun and afford a surprisingly amount of control. It doesn't ever track you with perfect 1-1 movement, but it doesn't really need to. It is just plain fun. Period.

Table tennis also plays fairly realistically. You have to actually move left and right to cover the whole table, and forehands, backhands, light taps, and overhand smashes are all recognized. It is very fun, and gets increasingly challenging as you play against the A.I. because they get better and better and use actual strategy to try and beat you.

Boxing was another favorite of mine. You hold your hands in front of your face to block, and then throw punches like you normally would. Jabs, hooks, uppercuts, haymakers, body shots, etc. are all possible. And you can't just flail around, either, because the A.I. will block and use different tactics of its own, so you actually have to adjust strategies in order to win.

Soccer is a bit weird in that you can't move your player, but instead just kick the ball around to pass it to teammates and ultimately take a shot on goal. Playing defense just has you side stepping to whichever side the ball is going to be passed on to intercept it. You can take a lot of different shots and make a lot of different passes, though, depending on how you kick, so it is kind of cool overall. Not for the long term, but it is neat for a while.

Volleyball can be interesting because it lets you make overhand, underhand, and jumping power shots and works pretty well. Onscreen indicators tell you what to do, but it is still up to you to actually move and do it. It can definitely be fun.

Graphics

Kinect Sports looks good. It isn't super detailed or anything, but everything is clean and colorful and looks good. It uses Xbox 360 Avatars for all of the events, which is always cool.

Sound

The sound is fairly good. Nothing spectacular in the way of sound effects, but the announcer is okay and rarely obnoxious, and licensed music tracks play now and then when you do something good.

Bottom Line

Kinect Sports is among our favorite Kinect launch titles. Not every sport is a winner, due to personal preferences or location conflicts (jumping up and down a 3 A.M. isn't good for apartment dwellers), but everything works surprisingly well and is a lot of fun. Bowling, table tennis, and boxing really stand out in particular and are awesome. The minigames put a twist on the traditional sports as well, and are fun on their own. This game is just good clean fun that gives you the same warm fuzzies that Wii Sports did four years ago. Parents, kids, grandparents - everyone will be able to get in front of the Kinect sensor and know how to play this game instantly. Kinect Sports is highly recommended for any new Kinect owner.

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