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Kinect Joy Ride
As a child, bumper car rides fascinated me. I can still remember the fun I had ramming my car into others.
In many ways, Joy Ride reminded me of those rides. By extending your hands outwards, Kinect detects them as your steering wheel and a turn in any direction would steer the car. Lean left or right and your car drifts.
You pull back your arms to your chest to charge up your boost and push forward to activate it. When you hit ramps and are free-falling, tilting in any direction will make your car perform flips and stunts that win you points from the crowds, which are needed to unlock race tracks and cars.
And that just about sums up the game. You are probably now thinking: what about acceleration and brakes?
The game does that for you and this is the part that made me lose just about all interest.
If you have played racing games before, you know there will be corners where you have to drift and turns where you want to brake but this game will have none of that.
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With speed being constant, you are simply guiding a car and this is not racing.
Trouble arises when your arms start to move along with the game. In the heat of action, players who are making turns will naturally throw their hands in the direction of turn, instead of making a circular steering motion to turn the car. This is especially so since your hands are not holding onto any physical steering controllers.
The confusion can get worse when you hit an obstacle and need to extricate yourself from it.
This is because when you do hit a wall, the car is still accelerating and you cannot slow down, reverse the car and continue the race.
I found myself swinging my arms, hoping that the game will register the movement while everyone else zips by.
Yes, one can take it easy with this game and win enough fans to unlock content. In this respect, the game offers a variety of fun mini-games like stunt challenges and drag racing to pass the time with friends.
But for a Kinect launch game, it lacks punch and ends up being one of the weaker, if not the weakest, game of the lot.
Let go: Kinect Joy Ride
