Kinect Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure (March 20, 2012) is the latest Kinect game released by Microsoft Studios. It is a family friendly adventure that lets you enter the Disney Pixar worlds of “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “Up,” “Cars” and “Toy Story”. As part of these adventures, you and one other person can team up with characters from these movies to navigate through their worlds, gather coins, and solve puzzles. With my trusty 7-year-old review partner at my side, let’s call him “lil guy”, we set off on our own adventure.
Initial Thoughts
What have I gotten myself into? Soon after putting in the disc and starting up the game, both lil guy and I are subjected to a full body scan and then a face scan. I feel somewhat violated and exhilarated at the same time, as my in game character springs to life. My character sorta looks like me, but in a slightly creepy way. Perhaps that’s how I look when I’m smiling. Once the character initialization process completes, we get to see how we look as robots, superheros, racecars, rats and Wilderness Explorers.
It’s time for our fieldtrip! After our characters are ready, we take a quick ride on a school bus that drops us off at Pixar Park. In split screen view, we are both shown an animation of a kid pumping his arms. Guess that means it’s time to try running through the park. And I do mean try, but I’ll get more into that later in the review.
Episodes
In Pixar Park, there are five different playground areas with a corresponding movie logo outside of each. Each movie area has multiple episodes where you can team up with a new playground friend, and play pretend. As you complete the episodes, additional ones unlock of increasing difficulty.
The Incredibles - Become a superhero and take out Omnidroids.
Ratatouille - Become a rat and travel the rooftops and sewers of Paris.
Up - Become a Wilderness Explorer and get to explore jungles.
Cars - Become a car loaded with spy gear and race to save the world. Speed, I am Speed.
Toy Story - Become a toy robot that joins the gang on their rescue adventures.
Our first stop was the Incredibles area, of course. Seriously, who doesn’t want to be a superhero?
Gameplay
Most of the movie areas have similar game mechanics.These are basically obstacle courses in nature that require you to run, jump, balance, swing, slide, swim, fly, fall, and throw. I was really impressed with the variety of movements and how each episode didn’t just focus on one type of movement. It takes a while to get the hang of the movement controls and body leaning while at the same time moving your hands or feet. This game is not for the uncoordinated! My lil guy was ahead of me the entire time, at least for the first few episodes.
During each episode, you can gather coins along the way. The more you collect, the more points you gain at the end of the episode. Along with the coins, you are timed for each episode and depending on how fast you get through it, you receive additional points. These points are combined for your final score and rating, gold, silver or bronze and can be used to unlock additional challenges. I really liked this feature of the game since you weren’t just scored on time or just by the number of coins you collect.
The Kinect Rush
Kinect Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure takes full use of the full body tracking feature of the Kinect. When you lean, your character goes in that direction. When you jump, your character jumps. Just like most Kinect games with full body tracking though, the running and turning aspects of the game are awkward at best and at times very frustrating. You know where you want to go, but just can’t get your on screen characters to go in that direction. For example, let’s say there is a simple ramp. You attempt to go up the ramp but veer off to the right of it. You try to get your character to swing around but end up overshooting the damn thing again. Rinse and repeat until you either finally make it or collapse crying on the floor. Actually, one of us did get teary eyed in frustration, but I won’t say who.
With the directional frustrations aside, the rest of the movements were very responsive. My favorites were the driving motions used for the Cars series of episodes, while my lil guy liked the leaning used in the free-fall parts the best. This was mostly because he could get a lot of coins this way. He also really enjoyed any of the episodes where he got to throw objects. I think this was because it required a different arm motion.
One of the best features of the game is the ability to quickly drop-in and drop-out of the game. This is very similar to how it works in Dance Central 2, if you’re familiar with that game. At any time, even during the middle of an episode, you can enter or leave the Kinect play zone. All you have to do to join is hop in, raise your arm, pick your character and off you go.
The Verdict
Overall, Kinect Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure is a fun game and one that kids are sure to enjoy. I would recommend this game mostly for the 6-10 year-old age range. I think older kids would find it boring and a bit babyish, while the younger kids would find some of the obstacle courses and puzzles too difficult. If you’re looking for a family game that takes advantage of some of the newer features of the Kinect, then you should probably pick this one up, especially if it drops in price.
About the Author
Tiffany "ElektraFi" Fary is a self- proclaimed Geeky Gamer Mom and is the Editor-in-Chief for 2old2play. She recently moved to the Boston area after being a Southerner for the past 15 years and currently resides with an Internet Celebrity and her 7-year-old son. Tiffany enjoys sampling beer flights in her free time and dreams of brewing her own beer one day. Her favorite types of games are Rhythm Games, RPGs and Shooters. She is a hardcore game completionist and loves to rack up her gamerscore on the Xbox 360.
