MotionSports

Have you ever felt that while Wii Sports was fun, what your life is truly lacking is the ability to fail at skiing in the comfort of your own home? You have? Then do I have some good news for you, fellow consumer – Ubisoft has come valiantly to your rescue by providing MotionSports (and no, that’s not a typo, they really did decide to make it a single word) on Kinect.

Do pardon me if I seem bitter over this release, but my biggest (and most outspoken fear) prior to all these new motion control devices’ release was that it’d lead to nothing more than cash-in Wii copy-cat titles. It would appear that MotionSports has chosen to step up and prove me absolutely right. MotionSports does nothing to make any of the sports included in the game in any way fun or enjoyable. The games are: Football, American Football, Horse Back Riding (???), Skiing, Boxing and Hang Gliding. They all however seem to focus more of poorly imitating the sports than they do to make them feel like an entertaining game. I think it’s time to break them down:

– Skiing is dull, and even worse – difficult to control. This isn’t like Sonic Free Riders where you at least have a sense of satisfaction from playing it, it’s just a motion controlled ski simulator which a lack of sensitivity in the controls.

– American Football is… well, American Football – as Ready-Up is a UK website, if you don’t know or care about American football before now, this shall not be your revelation to get into the sport.

– Boxing is boxing – nothing more and nothing less. If you’ve never played any version of any motion controlled boxing game ever, statistically, you’re dead.

– Football wins the crown for the worst of the bunch. Turn off Kinect, kick the air and make a fake crowd hissing noise with your voice and you have an almost identical experience. I felt so totally detached from the on-screen motions that I wish I had a cat to put in front of the screen to see if it made a difference to what the screen showed.

– Hang Gliding is probably my favourite of them all, although that’s clearly not saying much. I found it at least mildly smile-worthy to fly around for a few minutes, but it was a fleeting smile. My arms eventually started to cramp and I realised it wasn’t worth punishing myself for seemingly no gain.

– Horse Back Riding… really? HORSE BACK RIDING?! I’m certain I’m not the intended audience for this particular mini-game, but all I can do is work with what I’ve been given so all I can say with any conviction is this: I found navigating the X-Box Dashboard with Kinect to be a better use of my time.

My summary? You do not need MotionSports in your Kinect collection. Kinect (this game aside) has so far impressed me with the number of games I’ve actually enjoyed playing. You have Kinect Adventures already, and I have to say that is a far superior product. You need to have Sonic Free Riders. You need to have Dance Central. What you do not need is to ride a virtual horse around a field in your underwear, it’s degrading to Kinect, yourself, and to working horses across the globe.