By Daniel Rutledge
The Kinect is an amazing piece of technology, but hasn’t been used as well as I’d liked just yet.
Child of Eden was very fun and I do dig how Forza used the technology, but then there are a load of disappointing Kinect titles released that had me worried it was going to be a short-lived gimmick.
Fortunately, Kinect Disneyland Adventures is another title that uses Kinect with much greater success than many of the earlier Kinect games.
You move about a virtual Disneyland by simply pointing your arm where you want to go. You look around you by… looking around you. You hug Mickey Mouse, dance with Snow White or give Goofy a high-five by physically carrying out those actions. It works, and it’s great.
Considering I’m normally more of a Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto gamer rather than anything remotely kiddy, it’s very surprising that I enjoyed Kinect Disneyland Adventures as much as I did. I’m not going to play it over and over like I would my typical violent adult game, but I kind of wish I could – with a son or daughter I am yet to have.
There’s quite a lot to do in virtual Disneyland, aside from walking about marvelling at things and hugging, high-fiving or dancing with Disney characters. You also collect countless little coins with which you can unlock treats, and carry out various tasks for the Disney crew.
A highlight for me was learning how to fly with Buzz Lightyear and then shooting down aliens and spaceships. The flying controls are holding your arms up in a trance DJ / Christian rock vocalist pose and tilting left or right, much how people imitate planes naturally. You then use one arm to simply point and shoot automatically at the flying targets. It’s super simple and really quite fun. If I was 5-years-old, it’d probably be the greatest thing ever.
A lot of the other ride areas are great – especially Haunted Mansion, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean. But there’s loads and loads – a lot of time has gone into developing this game and giving players a lot of things to do. When you compare it to basic one-note fare like Kinectimals, it really is fantastic value.
It’s also laid out really well, surprisingly intuitive and everything in it is attractively presented.
Not only is Kinect Disneyland Adventures great fun to play around on, it’s further evidence that the Kinect technology really is worth holding on to and still holds a lot of promise for future titles.
If you have children at home and you own a Kinect, I highly recommend this title.
Four stars.
3 News
Kinect Disneyland Adventures
:: Publisher: Microsoft
:: Developer: Frontier Developments
:: Format: Xbox 360, PC
:: Rating: G