Fun and Frolics with Konami and Kinect!

With Microsoft’s Kinect device well and truly launched, a few other titles have been released and among them are three titles from Konami.

Here at GodisaGeek.com we thought we’d do a short roundup of those titles, namely Dance Evolution, Sports Island Freedom and Crossboard 7, and see whether they are worthy off adding to the Kinect Collection! (I really wanted to use “Kollection” there). Hit the jump to find out more!

Sports Island Freedom

It seemed obvious to start here really, as it’s the game competing with one of the best current Kinect games, Kinect Sports. To avoid confusion, whilst the game is also known as Deca Sports Freedom in the States and Deca Sporta Freedom in Japan, we’ll be referring to it as Sports Island Freedom as it is known in Europe.

Not off to the best of starts here sadly, the game is pretty ugly to look at and is fairly frustrating throughout. Tennis for example is just plain bad, no real feedback as to what you are doing and you can just swing an arm around to hit the ball most of the time! Even when really trying hard you’ll inexplicably just miss the ball sometimes and the easier AI opponents are hilariously bad, not even swinging at the ball at times. Some of the other modes aren’t as bad though and dodgeball is fun, but also lets itself down because it’s so slow to play.

Menus wise the game looks pretty rough as well, and like most Kinect games it suffers terribly from a ridiculous depth to the menu system and no simple gesture to go “Back to the start”. Seeing a blocky on screen stick man move his (or her) limbs doesn’t really look great either.

There are other sports on offer though obviously, such as snowboarding, archery, paintball (seriously!), curling and basketball (there really is a lot of choice), but it’s really hard to reccomend this title on any level. Maybe if the developers had focused on fewer sports events at a time instead of cramming in additional modes (paintball!) it could have been a whole lot better.

Dance Evolution

Obvious comparisons will be drawn to Dance Central here, with people probably favouring the Harmonix title if they want a dancing game, but Dance Evolution fits into a Europop niche, with less mainstream music and…well, lets just say that this game is very Japanese, with a young girl (she sounds about twelve!) narrating and an opening cut-scene thats seems to linger on an upskirt shot just a little bit too long.

This is actually the pick of the bunch though, with easy to navigate menus and the best motion tracking of the three games on show here. You will be projected into the dance settings, not your avatar, you! It’s really funny to see yourself dancing on screen and so far with all the Kinect games I’ve experienced, this is the first to actually put you on the screen during gameplay.

There isn’t a huge variety to the setlist though and it’s highly likely you may never have heard 95% of the songs on the disc. Dance Evolution is really fun to play, but it seemed to be very hard.  First attempt on the easiest setting I managed a “C” ranking!  Watching the tutorials is a little bit like hard work too, but you really ought to do so as it’ll give you a far greater understanding of the way the game works. If you are in the market for a Kinect dancing game and are happy with the Europop music combined with a very Japanese aesthetic, you could do a lot worse than Dance Evolution!

Crossboard 7

Seemingly an attempt at creating an “SSX” style game with motion controls and very nearly achieves it! Right down to the “cool dude” style voiceovers, on first inspection this seems like a really well designed and executed Snowboarding title! Sadly though, once the tutorials are out of the way the game seemed to go crazy and randomly make me stop, turn and do all manner of things. Maybe it was a space issue (though I was playing 8 feet away from the sensor) but activating your power up seems a bit strange too, forcing you to literally raise your foot/leg straight in the air then “stomp” down, it feels very unnatural to say the least.

You’ll find yourself banging into the sides of courses all the time as the controls on the whole just aren’t very good or responsive. If you have a bad back, don’t even attempt to try the title as bending over backwards just to move left isn’t something you’ll want to risk!

Jumping is at least satisfying though but movement on the board seems to vary from average to poor and at times it’s horribly frustrating.Visually the game is fairly average looking, though the menus are easy to navigate with simple hand gestures (put your hand up to advance) and the audio isn’t that bad, with a few generic rock tracks thrown in underneath the aforementioned “cool dude” voiceover.

I’m not really sure what the animals are all about in the game either, and instead I’d recommend people just play as their avatar, which is a really nice touch!

Despite all the negatives mentioned, the game can be fun if you are hankering for a snowboarding game (though it’s not all snowboarding in Crossboard 7) for your Kinect device, you could do worse, especially if you want some easy achievements!

So there you have it, Konami’s first forays into the world of Kinect are certainly a mixed bunch, with Dance Evolution certainly the pick of the bunch, creating an enjoyable experience to just have fun with. Crossboard 7 might be more popular with a younger crowd, but it’s likely frustration will set in at some point due to the sensitivity of the movement.  Sports Island Freedom sadly can’t be recommended at all, containing some of the strangest choices for a Sports mini-game title to date (seriously, one more time…paintball?) with poor AI and ropey unresponsive controls that lack accuracy.