A long time ago, in a game studio far far away, a great idea was pitched to Microsoft, to bring star wars to the kinect so people can wield a virtual lightsaber or drive a pod racer at 500 mph in there own home. On paper, this idea sounds mind-blowingly amazing, in reality, it's a poorly executed and sluggish pile of drivel, but not all of this is the games fault, it is partially to do with the hardware and the kinect peripheral itself. Kinect is not optimised for rapid swinging and jumping, More so for slower, more timed movements, which is probably why yoga and fitness games are so popular, as they utilise kinect properly and are designed to run better on it. So the sad thing is it appears the only time we will get a responsive kinect star wars game is if Microsoft release an entirely new and more responsive kinect 2 and kinect star wars 2 game, which is almost Guaranteed to not happen by the end of the decade, if at all, as Microsoft will already have their hands full with the next gen Xbox.
But enough with the bad, as I still sense goodness in this one... First off the pod racing is a blast, putting you in the cockpit of many of the iconic pods featured in the phantom menace. You hold a pair of virtual handlebars and pull your arms back in the desired direction you want to go, and it works surprisingly well, there are a few tracks to choose from including the mos eisley and felucia raceways. You get a boost feature by pushing your arms forward which is quite neat too.
The next mode I played is the main story mode, also known as Jedi destiny mode, which is probably my favourite part of the game, as you navigate your way through levels slicing battle droids. These sections are broken up by occasional speeder bike or turret sections which are also fun.
Rancor rampage is another very enjoyable mode, as you play none other than an escaped giant Rancor, smashing your way through towns bringing Down buildings and eating people to regain your health. You actually have to reflect how a real rancor would move to get it to walk around, like you have to stomp around flailing your arms (still not as embarrassing as the dance mode, which I have not tried yet...) for it to work best, and use all fours to charge like a giant cheetah. This mode surprised me as in videos I saw it looked quite unresponsive but in reality it's one of the more responsive modes in the game. The destruction effects looked surprisingly good, similar to the felling effects in battlefield. Once I had levelled tatooine to the ground, I took a look around my living room to see it mirrored the mess I had just made by stomping around in game, kinect certainly is interactive... .
The last mode I played is duels of Fate, which on paper, should be the best, and it's naturally the reason people will be picking up this game, to have lightsaber duels with iconic characters such as count Dooku and darth Vader. But all it is is a slow paced mess where there is a 2 second break between saber swings which really breaks up the combat and doesn't reflect the fast paced fights from the movies at all. You take turns defending and attacking each other, but it's just slow and boring whereas at least in the story mode the combat is a bit faster and uninterrupted. I had higher expectations, seeing as the saber duels are a key part in star wars, you would think they would have spent a lot of time polishing this mode to perfection, but sadly it appears the stormtrooper dancing minigame has more polish, so the devs have got their priorities horribly wrong, and when you have a fan base as big as a small moon you need to get things right.
I am going to give kinect star wars a bit of slack because as I mentioned the problems partly lay with kinects poor rapid movement detection and it simply can't handle fast paced games. Die hard fans might squeeze some short lived enjoyment from the pod racing, rancor and story modes, just make sure you avoid the dancing mode if you dont want your soul to be crushed. Families will probably love this game as it can be played cooperatively. But as the phantom menace proved, catering star wars purely for a child audience is loosing them a big part of their fan base, so sadly many older fans may now avoid this game as it appears more marketed for children or young teens, even the shop assistant in Tesco who sold the game to me said he was turned off by the dancing mode and will just go back to playing star wars the force unleashed.
All in all I will award kinect star wars 6 out of 10, as there is some fun to be had here, with lots of unlockables to boot. The soundtrack and sound effects you know and love are also all here, apart from the voice actors who are absent. One last thing I need to give credit to is the tutorial with yoda, I genuinely felt tired lifting my arms in the air like Luke did when he was using the force to lift heavy objects in empire strikes back! So I really felt like I was in the Film at that point!
Thanks for reading
Ryan
But enough with the bad, as I still sense goodness in this one... First off the pod racing is a blast, putting you in the cockpit of many of the iconic pods featured in the phantom menace. You hold a pair of virtual handlebars and pull your arms back in the desired direction you want to go, and it works surprisingly well, there are a few tracks to choose from including the mos eisley and felucia raceways. You get a boost feature by pushing your arms forward which is quite neat too.
The next mode I played is the main story mode, also known as Jedi destiny mode, which is probably my favourite part of the game, as you navigate your way through levels slicing battle droids. These sections are broken up by occasional speeder bike or turret sections which are also fun.
Rancor rampage is another very enjoyable mode, as you play none other than an escaped giant Rancor, smashing your way through towns bringing Down buildings and eating people to regain your health. You actually have to reflect how a real rancor would move to get it to walk around, like you have to stomp around flailing your arms (still not as embarrassing as the dance mode, which I have not tried yet...) for it to work best, and use all fours to charge like a giant cheetah. This mode surprised me as in videos I saw it looked quite unresponsive but in reality it's one of the more responsive modes in the game. The destruction effects looked surprisingly good, similar to the felling effects in battlefield. Once I had levelled tatooine to the ground, I took a look around my living room to see it mirrored the mess I had just made by stomping around in game, kinect certainly is interactive... .
The last mode I played is duels of Fate, which on paper, should be the best, and it's naturally the reason people will be picking up this game, to have lightsaber duels with iconic characters such as count Dooku and darth Vader. But all it is is a slow paced mess where there is a 2 second break between saber swings which really breaks up the combat and doesn't reflect the fast paced fights from the movies at all. You take turns defending and attacking each other, but it's just slow and boring whereas at least in the story mode the combat is a bit faster and uninterrupted. I had higher expectations, seeing as the saber duels are a key part in star wars, you would think they would have spent a lot of time polishing this mode to perfection, but sadly it appears the stormtrooper dancing minigame has more polish, so the devs have got their priorities horribly wrong, and when you have a fan base as big as a small moon you need to get things right.
I am going to give kinect star wars a bit of slack because as I mentioned the problems partly lay with kinects poor rapid movement detection and it simply can't handle fast paced games. Die hard fans might squeeze some short lived enjoyment from the pod racing, rancor and story modes, just make sure you avoid the dancing mode if you dont want your soul to be crushed. Families will probably love this game as it can be played cooperatively. But as the phantom menace proved, catering star wars purely for a child audience is loosing them a big part of their fan base, so sadly many older fans may now avoid this game as it appears more marketed for children or young teens, even the shop assistant in Tesco who sold the game to me said he was turned off by the dancing mode and will just go back to playing star wars the force unleashed.
All in all I will award kinect star wars 6 out of 10, as there is some fun to be had here, with lots of unlockables to boot. The soundtrack and sound effects you know and love are also all here, apart from the voice actors who are absent. One last thing I need to give credit to is the tutorial with yoda, I genuinely felt tired lifting my arms in the air like Luke did when he was using the force to lift heavy objects in empire strikes back! So I really felt like I was in the Film at that point!
Thanks for reading
Ryan
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