Kinect Winter Stars Xbox 360 Review

Since I was a young lad I wanted to be involved in Winter Sports, Love the idea of downhill racing, bobsled and snowboarding, so when Winter Stars for Kinect came along I was in my element.

Winter Stars is based around 11 events which are unlocked by playing through story mode. Each event features its own character, this could be a woman or a man which makes a refreshing change. Doing well in an event or meeting some small goal, such as making a perfect turn in the bobsled, yields experience points that can be used to upgrade the characters’ abilities, as well as their gear and equipment.

You need to play through the single-player is also necessary to unlock all of the events, which will then become available to play at any time. The game also features various difficulty settings, including a “Family” mode, which simplifies the movements, making the game more accessible. I do suggest that you dont have the family mode on as within 5 minutes of playing using the simplified controls it started to get boring.

Winter Stars features 11 different events:

• Bobsled – You have to run to get the bobsled going,  jump inside. Lean from side to side watching the racing line to follow and occasionally hold your arm out to steady to bob.

• Paraskiing – Working with wind direction and speed with this event.

• Biathlon – This is a mix of both skiing and shooting. After skiing around a track, you reach a shooting gallery and have five bullets to hit five targets as quickly as possible. There are usually two laps in a Biathlon. I did this with family controls on and won every event, there seemed to be no actual skill apart from the correct timing for dropping you hand to fire the gun at the right time.

• Figure Skating – You perform the correct gestures show on screen at the correct time. This will rack up the points giving you the lead.

• Downhill Skiing – One of the more simple games. Follow the racing lines and lean in the direction you want to go as you move between gates as fast as possible.

• Snowboard Cross – Race around performing tricks of varying difficulties, this was one of my favourite events.

• Short Track – Speedskating, a little boring and repetitive as you just need to swing your arms to control.

• Sky Flying – Ski jumping – Wind and Timing play a major role within this event

• Freeride Skiing – Various tricks can be completed for this even similar to the snow board cross event.

• Curling – Nice easy simple game where you have to score the most points whilst knocking out your opponents stones.

•  Snowmobile – This one is racing on snowmobiles.

I played the 360 version of the game, using the Kinect, which is bound to produce a different experience than the other two versions of the game. That being said, the Kinect controls seemed fairly responsive, as subtle leans were able to appropriately change direction on some of the sports but not all, some of the events I found the controls to be sloppy and unresponsive.

Graphically the game is sometimes pretty good but the characters seem flat and lifeless.

All in all your kids will enjoy the game, not sure about its longevity but can be good fun especially with the multiplayer modes for both online and offline.

Overall

6/10 The game does not push the boundaries of what can be done with Kinect but the odd event is fun to play with.