Playing Kinect Adventures’ River Rush mode with my preschool daughter made me feel like I was careening down a river in real life. Sitting in a small confined raft, approaching a drop with no idea if it’s 10 feet or 100 feet and wondering if you’ll make it out alive or be laughing with glee on the other side.
Kinect for Xbox 360 can be an extremely rewarding experience with young kids, but it can also push one’s patience to its breaking point.
River Rush is a lot of fun for my daughter. She loves all the jumping up and down to make the raft act like a cricket avoiding an angry shoe. It’s physically engaging for her, which is a plus for me, and easy enough that she can grasp most of the simple body controls: jump to make the raft jump and lean left or right to steer the raft.
Her favorite part comes after the ride ends and Kinect displays three photos snapped of me and her playing. It’s like the final drop in Disneyland’s Splash Mountain only you won’t need a change of clothes afterward. A little camera even appears on-screen right before the snapshot so you can smile or strike your best – or worst – pose.
Taking it another step forward into the social realm, Microsoft allows you to upload any of the scores of pictures you’ll accumulate playing Kinect Adventures to KinectShare.com where they can be posted to Facebook or emailed to friends. Here’s my daughter and I having a blast:
For every fun River Rush game there was one filled with frustration for both of us, part of the Kinect learning experience for preschoolers, kindergarteners and other young kids. The Kinect hardware requires a large room to work with two players, a selectable option versus a regular sized room during the game’s boot-up sequence. My room where Kinect is installed is plenty big so I’m playing under optimal conditions.
Even with a large room there are finite boundaries to where the camera can keep its “eye” on both players. Moving just a little too far forward or back flashes a warning on the screen and then ultimately disconnects that player from the game. My daughter was getting frustrated with me continually telling her to move back or forward a little, and I grew tired of her not grasping the concept to stay in one spot.
Another Kinect Adventures game where my daughter and I struggled to play cooperatively is 20,000 Leaks. This game puts the players into an underwater glass half-box where fish swim by and strike the glass creating leaks. Each player covers one side of the box which is three-dimensional including a front, bottom and sides. Leaks can occur pretty much anywhere on the box.
My daughter was struggling to pinpoint the leaks within the three-dimensional space, especially the ones involving your feet on the floor. Sometimes she wouldn’t move up far enough in the confined space to get the ones on the front glass, and other times she wouldn’t reach far enough to the side for those leaks.
After several attempted failed in-game coaching attempts I tried to reach over and plug the leaks on her side. The idea to “cross bodies” is about as reliable as “crossing streams” in Ghostbusters: you don’t know what’s going to happen. Kinect didn’t particularly care for my actions and on two occasions actually “switched” our position. I’m trying to compensate and get the positions righted while plugging leaks, my daughter’s getting frustrated and now leaving the Kinect area and our game is basically a bust.
There are many rewards to enjoy with young kids while playing Kinect that reach far beyond Xbox 360 Achievements. Exercise patience, be vigilant with instructions and understand that there are limitations to Kinect that your kids may take some time to understand.
What have your experiences been like playing Kinect with young kids? Share your Kinect with kids experiences in the comments section below.
– Dan Bradley
