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Kinect Sports Rivals |OT| Preseason’s over, it’s time to take sides

The Elite

The Elite

BOSS
Looks like some more functionality was unlocked.

Just went to play some Climbing and my opponent was the avatar of a real person with their gamertag as their name. She wiped the floor with me.

I also have someone else on my Friend's List with the game and I can issue them Rival challenges right from the main menu. Neat.

Also, this game looks gorgeous. Colourful and vibrant environments with no noticeable slowdown or issues. They definitely used the extra time to add some polish.
 
SEGAvangelist

SEGAvangelist

Member
DoctorWho said:
Looks like some more functionality was unlocked.

Just went to play some Climbing and my opponent was the avatar of a real person with their gamertag as their name. She wiped the floor with me.

I also have someone else on my Friend's List with the game and I can issue them Rival challenges right from the main menu. Neat.

Also, this game looks gorgeous. Colourful and vibrant environments with no noticeable slowdown or issues. They definitely used the extra time to add some polish.
Click to expand...

I like to see this. :)
 
The Elite

The Elite

BOSS
When looking at a Rivals information page it gives you a rundown of their recent in game achievements, which I thought was neat. I could see that the person had recently joined a clan, levelled up in Bowling and completed various other activities. I could issue them challenges from that page as well.
 
E

EBE

Member
thanks for the impressions, Doctor! posting this again for the new page:
DoctorWho said:
Despite the small, low lit, space of my apartment's living room I was able to play these three last events quite well. It's not the ideal condition but I still managed to have a lot of fun. When I get around to moving my coffee table off to the side for serious play I shouldn't have any issues.
Click to expand...
i also have a rather small play space in my apartment. good to hear you havent had much issue with your set up. i think a lot of people are going to be pleasantly surprised by this game come the 8th.
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
I am disappointed with the lineup on-disc just down to not including table tennis, but I anticipate new (or updated) sports and minigames to be the main DLC stream over the next year or so. Hope that this is better than KS2.
 
O

Obscured

Member
DoctorWho said:
Looks like some more functionality was unlocked.

Just went to play some Climbing and my opponent was the avatar of a real person with their gamertag as their name. She wiped the floor with me.

I also have someone else on my Friend's List with the game and I can issue them Rival challenges right from the main menu. Neat.

Also, this game looks gorgeous. Colourful and vibrant environments with no noticeable slowdown or issues. They definitely used the extra time to add some polish.
Click to expand...

Great to hear these impressions. Looking forward to trying it out. With the preseason I really liked the art style and that water was nice. I was also impressed with the motion tracking. I didn't even realize how good it was until I waved my arms around for some stupid reason after a race, definitely a huge step up from the first kinect. Probably won't grab it day one as I'm still spending a lot of time with TitanFall, but it'll be a fairly quick purchase.
 
E

EBE

Member
updated the OT with an interview by Xbox Wire i missed yesterday:

Creating a Champion in Kinect Sports Rivals

worth a read if youre interested in learning how the Champions system works. im sure there'll be the odd story of a Champion looking nothing its real world counterpart floating around this thread once the game hits, but the tech appears to have been well engineered, so who knows. excited to see how it works out in the wild
 
E

EBE

Member
damn. thought someone had posted an early review. im guessing saturday or sunday. just five more days.

anyway, this might be a good time to share some gamertags, if anyone is interested. im going to be picking this up at launch and id love to play against other gaffers' champions:

EBEORIETEMETHHP

edit.

Monday? really? hmmm....
 
M

Mdk7

Member
DoctorWho said:
Looks like some more functionality was unlocked.

Just went to play some Climbing and my opponent was the avatar of a real person with their gamertag as their name. She wiped the floor with me.

I also have someone else on my Friend's List with the game and I can issue them Rival challenges right from the main menu. Neat.

Also, this game looks gorgeous. Colourful and vibrant environments with no noticeable slowdown or issues. They definitely used the extra time to add some polish.
Click to expand...

So, did you beat me somewhere? :D
 
Mofo

Mofo

Member
The menu is complete balls. I felt like I was captive in my family room in fear of making the game load again.

Did eventually find the quick play option, but after playing Wake Race, Rock Climb, and Target I was seriously just not feeling it. Might play more tonight and tomorrow and Twich it.
 
E

EBE

Member
shinnn said:
Its on google cache
Click to expand...

yup thats the one.

weird to read that the kinects performance was affected by poor lighting. afaik the active IR camera makes that a non issue. ive used kinect in complete darkness and its picked me up fine.

and rock climbing is the most "brutal" of the bunch? when other outlets have pretty much unanimously agreed its the best event in the game? i dont know about that. i dont wanna call the review out too much for disagreeing with others. i mean thats perfectly fine. but i wonder how much user error was going on. i definitely DO NOT need a huge space to play kinect, as ive tried xbox fitness and just dance 2014
 
Alx

Alx

Member
It's true that loading times are a bit long. And bowling is boring to watch. Fortunately he switched to tennis now.
 
Alx

Alx

Member
It didn't look very different from bowling in KS1, which was fine already. I'm not too worried about that, although it makes it one of the less exciting games of the lot for me, same old same old.
 
Mofo

Mofo

Member
Son hijacked my XBone. Sorry it wasn't up that long. The load times are so distracting and pull you out of the game. They did a decent job with bowling, but the first time I tried tennis I failed the training and instead of asking me if I wanted to try it again, it kicked me back out to the main menu (after a long load) and then more loading just to get to the unstoppable tutorial again.
 
E

Eoin

Member
Mofo said:
Son hijacked my XBone. Sorry it wasn't up that long. The load times are so distracting and pull you out of the game. They did a decent job with bowling, but the first time I tried tennis I failed the training and instead of asking me if I wanted to try it again, it kicked me back out to the main menu (after a long load) and then more loading just to get to the unstoppable tutorial again.
Click to expand...
What a shame. Load times are a killer for party games.
 
M

MrBlonde

Member
Mofo said:
Son hijacked my XBone. Sorry it wasn't up that long. The load times are so distracting and pull you out of the game. They did a decent job with bowling, but the first time I tried tennis I failed the training and instead of asking me if I wanted to try it again, it kicked me back out to the main menu (after a long load) and then more loading just to get to the unstoppable tutorial again.
Click to expand...

Yeah I watched that part, terrible. It should not kick you all the way out and make you watch the intro again, wtf are they thinking?
 
J

JMizzlin

Member
Impressions from playing for the past four days:

Bowling: Tough little game. I don't quite understand the subtleties surrounding controlling the aftershot/lining up, but am getting better the more I play it. Probably the longest game purely due to the 10 frames.

Rock Climbing: Largely my favourite sport, just a lot of fun to power up a wall. Some of the harder challenges can be frustrating but that is largely due to panicking under pressure (pro tip: don't!). Definitely found best results by repeating courses and mapping out routes.

Wave Racing: Wasn't a big fan of this in the demo however am now enjoying it quite a bit. Vsing peoples ghosts online is pretty challenging and while there have been multiple times I've restarted the race due to stupidity it was definitely satisfying to nail some tracks.

Target Shooting: You don't pull a trigger or anything, you just hold your outstretched arm over a target for roughly a second to shoot it. Nothing particularly special about it, other than power-ups and the ability to trigger a turret that shoots your opponent. I don't think they could have done more, but it's not my favourite game.

Tennis: The game I had the greatest deal of trouble with. Kinect was quite unresponsive, particularly with backhand swings and even serving was difficult at times (I am very tall, however, and barely fit into my kinect frame). I don't understand any of the special shots or how to trigger them and purely win out of luck.

Soccer: Interesting game, slowly growing on me. You dribble a ball up the field by selecting the best and fastest type of pass before shooting. Shooting baffled me for the longest time however I eventually slowed down and actually started to work the follow-through of shots and had more success. Kinect had a difficult time registering my fist when defending so I can't say I've nailed the game yet.


Preferences:
Rock Climbing > Wave Racing > Bowling > Soccer > Target Shooting > Tennis.

Overall thoughts:
As I said before, this game is legit. A lot of fun and truly finally a kinect game that I can have fun with playing solo as opposed to just when friends drop by. The games are most rewarding when effort and time are put into mastering them and I think the competitive nature of the game is the thing it has going for it.


(Finished the 'story missions' last night and now just doing the odd events til the leaderboards go live).
 
E

EBE

Member
Eye Drop said:
Impressions from playing for the past four days:

Bowling: Tough little game. I don't quite understand the subtleties surrounding controlling the aftershot/lining up, but am getting better the more I play it. Probably the longest game purely due to the 10 frames.

Rock Climbing: Largely my favourite sport, just a lot of fun to power up a wall. Some of the harder challenges can be frustrating but that is largely due to panicking under pressure (pro tip: don't!). Definitely found best results by repeating courses and mapping out routes.

Wave Racing: Wasn't a big fan of this in the demo however am now enjoying it quite a bit. Vsing peoples ghosts online is pretty challenging and while there have been multiple times I've restarted the race due to stupidity it was definitely satisfying to nail some tracks.

Target Shooting: You don't pull a trigger or anything, you just hold your outstretched arm over a target for roughly a second to shoot it. Nothing particularly special about it, other than power-ups and the ability to trigger a turret that shoots your opponent. I don't think they could have done more, but it's not my favourite game.

Tennis: The game I had the greatest deal of trouble with. Kinect was quite unresponsive, particularly with backhand swings and even serving was difficult at times (I am very tall, however, and barely fit into my kinect frame). I don't understand any of the special shots or how to trigger them and purely win out of luck.

Soccer: Interesting game, slowly growing on me. You dribble a ball up the field by selecting the best and fastest type of pass before shooting. Shooting baffled me for the longest time however I eventually slowed down and actually started to work the follow-through of shots and had more success. Kinect had a difficult time registering my fist when defending so I can't say I've nailed the game yet.


Preferences:
Rock Climbing > Wave Racing > Bowling > Soccer > Target Shooting > Tennis.

Overall thoughts:
As I said before, this game is legit. A lot of fun and truly finally a kinect game that I can have fun with playing solo as opposed to just when friends drop by. The games are most rewarding when effort and time are put into mastering them and I think the competitive nature of the game is the thing it has going for it.


(Finished the 'story missions' last night and now just doing the odd events til the leaderboards go live).
Click to expand...

thanks for the impressions. real test are going to be tomorrows reviews. rare have done good work on the first two KS games, so im expecting similar scores. game looks really fun.

long load times are a pain, but those can hopefully (?) be fixed in an update.
 
J

JMizzlin

Member
EBE said:
thanks for the impressions. real test are going to be tomorrows reviews. rare have done good work on the first two KS games, so im expecting similar scores. game looks really fun.

long load times are a pain, but those can hopefully (?) be fixed in an update.
Click to expand...

Forgot to mention load times! Those and unskippable cutscenes are quite painful. Handy to have a chair around to sit down between events as it does take a while.
 
AgentP

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
shinnn said:
Its on google cache
Click to expand...

While bowling in particular is easy to play and looks great, the not-quite-right recognition of you trying to bend and alter the ball’s spin relegates it to average status. Tennis is even less responsive, as the timing of the swing does not ever feel tight; I had the most success when swinging at the moment the ball bounced, even though that meant my follow-through occurred well before the ball actually reached the target.
Click to expand...

Yep, it's a Kinect game.
 
D

Doodis

Member
Eye Drop said:
Overall thoughts:
As I said before, this game is legit. A lot of fun and truly finally a kinect game that I can have fun with playing solo as opposed to just when friends drop by.
Click to expand...
Interesting. From your thoughts on each of the games, it doesn't sound that great, or at least not much of a step above the older games. But your overall impression is pretty positive.

I was really looking forward to this, but from most pre-release comments, it seems pretty mediocre. Guess we'll see what the reviews have to say.
 
J

JMizzlin

Member
Doodis said:
Interesting. From your thoughts on each of the games, it doesn't sound that great, or at least not much of a step above the older games. But your overall impression is pretty positive.

I was really looking forward to this, but from most pre-release comments, it seems pretty mediocre. Guess we'll see what the reviews have to say.
Click to expand...

You're right, I suppose what I'm saying is a bit conflicting. What I enjoy about the game I enjoy a lot. Rock climbing is a blast. But the weak points should definitely be noted also.

For me it's the best Kinect game I've played.
 
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