To my surprise, the only time the Kinect stopped working completely is when my dog would run around the room. That fact that it would work at all makes the Kinect the Kinect Sports Rivals all-star. Most of the time may not sound impressive, but imagine me using the Kinect while my legs were up on my couch and my feet were point at the camera. To push the Kinect to its limits, I tried playing it while lounging Cleopatra style on my couch and it worked most of the time. My avatar would even appear to be sitting if I played the soccer mini-game while sitting. On top of that,The Kinect is supposed to be able to track you while standing or sitting when you play Kinect Sports Rivals, and every time I tried the Kinect in a sitting position it continued to track my body movements. It did not look like me when all the scanning was over, but it looked exactly like my father. The greatest deviation I found was actually with my own avatar. The results are usually fudged in order to give everyone an athlete’s physique and the chin of an alpha-male, but these Kinect Sports clones usually do look like their original donors.
Each avatar is built by having the Kinect scan your face for its specific 3D shape, your skin colour, hair colour, hair style, if you wear glasses, if you have facial hair, and your physique. I’ve seen it scan three different people, and every time the results were impressive. Before the fun in the sun happens, you have the option to use the Kinect’s cameras to make your own Kinect Sports avatar. The Kinect will impress you early and often, but it will start with its facial scanning software. To my surprise, the Kinect camera ended up being the true all-star athlete of this product. On top of that, they’ve all been done at this high level of quality, so I find it hard to write home to my mother about them. They’re all solid experiences to be sure, but they’ve all been done before in Wii Sports, Wave Race 64, or other titles.
Now all of that said, the mini-games are not the impressive part of Kinect Sports Rivals.